


A Fistful of Shards

by pr0blemat1c



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Because it's Nil, Blood and Violence, Eventual Smut, F/M, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Nil and Aloy have some personal issues, Original Character(s), Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, change the rating as smut happens, more tags added as more is written, takes place outside the normal game area so probably no other characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-14 05:39:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14763666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pr0blemat1c/pseuds/pr0blemat1c
Summary: “What are you thinking about?”Blinking slowly, he refocused on her face, meeting her curious eyes. They had never stayed together after their bloody reunions, and as such he had never been forced to speak with her at length. Much to his surprise, her question didn’t bother him as much as it usually would; she didn’t strike him to be like normal people who were often uncomfortable with silence. They’d traveled with hardly a word passed between them to this point, so he felt the huntress had earned her question.“You,” he answered simply. In the dim firelight, he could vaguely make out a change in her complexion, and he tilted his head slightly in interest.**On Hiatus While I Hyperfocus on other Stuff**





	1. The Sobeck Ranch

Aloy watched her breath billow out into the chill air, rising and dissipating against the golden early morning rays cast by the sun rising over the horizon. Biting into a dried bit of meat, she chewed absent mindedly atop the dilapidated roof of the Sobeck ranch house. In the distance, billows of dust rose and glittered in the cold morning sunlight as a herd of machines grazed diligently against the hard dusty earth. Some she recognized, some she didn't.

 

It had been a week since her arrival, and a moon since the defeat of Hades. The flesh between her eyebrows creased unhappily at the thought of it, but she did her best to smooth out the emotion and focus on the sunrise instead. This was a daily struggle for her since her victory against Hades; it had been nearly impossible to feel victorious, or at least some sense of gratification. And even then, the crowds, the admiration, and the seemingly endless celebration had been too much for her, too overwhelming. Shutting Hades down didn't feel like winning a war, as the Carja seemed to think. To Aloy, It felt like one battle in a long line of to-dos. Sure, they had prevented a full-scale annihilation, but there were so many strings left in the wind that it baffled Aloy that people felt like they deserved to celebrate.

  
Avad seemed to understand more than others how important it was that Gaia be repaired and the network be restored to full functionality, but he was devoted to matters of Meridian. There was no space to add in more concerns for the fate of the world, let alone take the time to teach him everything he would need to understand in order to be of any help to her. Erend, Petra, Vanasha, Talanah... They were all wonderful in their own way, but too similarly devoted to their own concerns. Everyone kept encouraging her to relax or trying to convince her she'd done enough already.

 

Aloy sighed, unable to commit herself to a peaceful morning watching the sunlight and got to her feet, dropping down to the ladder and the dusty ground below. The Sobeck ranch at least felt somewhat like a home to her. Nothing would feel quite like the safety of Rost's cabin, at least… while he had been alive. She had learned quickly that any semblance of comfort that existed there had died with Rost, and after the battle of Hades, even visiting him felt hollow. She had found nothing new about Gaia after Hades, and her exploration of the cauldrons yielded little to no results. She felt like a failure, visiting him to report each and every time that she still had nothing new.

  
It was at her third or fourth visit that she realized that there was nothing left for her in the Carja or Nora lands. Both had given her empty offers of homes under a thin veil of deception. Aloy learned quickly that her status as the anointed, or the sun savior, or whatever other title they wanted to bestow on her was far more important than anything real about who she was.

 

They would rather swoon, preen, or praise her than listen to any suggestions she had about Gaia, and her requests for council meetings were met in gifts of silks. Every time she opened her mouth to urge others to care about the fate of the caretaker of their world, they insisted she fill herself instead with useless feasts and trivial pursuits.

 

It made her sick.

 

Fully lost in her emotions now, Aloy aggressively slung her bow over her back and whistled for her strider out in the pasture beyond the ranch. The one she had ridden into the west seemed to be the only one in this area; most of the rideable machines seeming to be broadheads and other similar machines. It made sense, given the sparse vegetation surrounding the ranch.

 

Aloy hesitated at the gate to the property, her fingers gingerly brushing the skin above her ear where her focus normally sat. With her relationship with Sylens ending so abruptly and his intentions more than suspicious, she had elected to keep her focus off when traveling within familiar land. As mysterious as everyone had painted the west, she had found it not terribly different from any other strange land she had traveled in- even more fortunate, it seemed that the harsh deserts which littered the lands beyond the Carja borders were unfavorable for settlement, and thus sparsely populated. Machines, she could handle. People...?

 

Her strider released a gust of compressed air, and Aloy was broken from her thoughts. She swung her legs over the machine's back and squeezed the panels across it's shoulders, easing it forward into the now bright rays of the sun over the tip of the horizon.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------

 

Aloy sat as far away from the fire as possible, avoiding the heat as it cooked the small quail. The sun beat down mercilessly on the hot earth, and Aloy found herself missing the more moderate sun of Meridian. "At least there was water in Meridian..." she murmured to herself underneath the cover of a thin cloth, half strung over the back of her strider next to her. The hunt had been satisfactory, but only in momentarily distracting her from her thoughts. The game in the area was sparse, just enough for her to survive on, and although there were some machines that were certainly a challenging hunt, she felt somewhat wasteful in destroying them when she had no viable use for their more valuable parts. No sense in picking fights with the otherwise calm machines unless there was something to be gained from it.

 

More than anything Aloy was bored. Bored of waiting. Bored of uncertainty. Bored of the endless tan and brown strips of earth that surrounded her. Bored of living inside of her memories with only the ghosts of her friend’s voices that she had abandoned when the attention became too much. She often found herself wondering what she was even doing out in the hellish landscape that surrounded the old Sobeck property. Still, she felt that she couldn't bring herself to leave the ranch. A voice in the back of her mind told her she was waiting for something- she just didn't know what yet.

 

Aloy scanned the horizon once more, keeping her eyes peeled for larger machines drawn by the smoke of her fire, and was immediately startled into a sitting position. Reaching for her bow behind her back, she instinctively reached her right hand up to her temple and cursed as she brushed bare skin. In the distance, wavering in the sun was a dark figure. Just one, by the looks of it, and too small to be any machine she was familiar with.

 

She quickly kicked earth over the coals of her fire and strung an arrow in anticipation. She was wary but... Confused. The shadow seemed to suggest a human, but what fool would bother approaching an unfriendly fire in the middle of hostile land? The idea of a trap briefly crossed Aloy's mind, but if some group was using this traveler as bait, where would they even hide? The biggest cover within a mile was a large windblown shrub, and Aloy had cleverly chosen a resting spot far away from any craggy formations where danger may lurk within the crevices, out of her sight. Evaluating her options, Aloy decided that the figure approaching her was either a foolish human, or some creature she was yet unaware of. Either way, not an immediate danger when one of her was easily equal to four average hunters. Settling into a defensive crouch, she waited and watched as the figure lumbered closer.

 

The distance decreased over time, with the distortion of the hot earth lessening and making the figure clearer. Definitely the shape and size of a moderately built man. Armor glittered in the sun and bright colors underneath suggested allegiance to some sort of tribe, rather than a drably dressed bandit or traveler. A fair amount of flesh was exposed as well, which seemed curious to Aloy, and she could faintly make out what appeared to be red body paint across the chest and arms. Had she missed a settlement somewhere out here in her exploration of the bleak desert surrounding the ranch?

 

Pulling an arrow back, she called out, her voice carrying in a hollow echo across the sand. "Not any closer, unless you want an arrow through your gut." Her eyes narrowed against the sunlight, gauging the response of the man, and was surprised to find not even a hint of hesitation in their gait. What kind of fool kept the entire front of their chest and stomach exposed in conditions like this, and then refused to stand down to the threat of a well-aimed arrow?

 

A shiver went down her spine as she heard the reply, and the figure inched closer. The voice was nearly monotone, with a mockery of inflection that suggested the effort of polite speech was more for her than any fear of bodily harm.

 

"I've already given you the offer once, huntress. It only makes sense now you would deliver the final bloody arrow."

 

Aloy rose to her feet and lowered her bow slightly, but not completely, her fingers never leaving the nocked arrow. He was within thirty yards now, and Aloy couldn't believe she didn't recognize his stupid headdress sooner as it swayed precariously in the wind.

 

"Nil?!" She shouted, her voice betraying her confusion and surprise. Didn’t Carja staunchly oppose traveling any further than Sunfall? Of course, Aloy reminded herself, Nil was no average Carja.

 

He gave her one crooked smile, opened his mouth to reply, and promptly collapsed into the dirt. Aloy squinted, again confused if she was walking into some kind of trap. Bowstring tight, she crouched and maneuvered slowly across the earth towards him, eyes darting from his form to the horizon for any sign of danger. A faint outline of smoke she hadn't spotted before was crawling into the air far north of her, and she darted her gaze back to Nil's motionless form in anticipation of attack. Her stomach dropped into her feet, however, as she realized the red body paint she had identified from her assessment earlier was in fact a collection of gashes and arrow holes along his body. By the looks of it, he had narrowly escaped some battle with his life, and had walked aimlessly until he spotted her campfire.

 

"Oh shit" Aloy mumbled, and dropped out of her defensive stance to press her fingers against his hot, dusty neck. Was he even breathing? She sighed and whistled to her strider, which obediently trotted over to her, and slung his body over the machine's back. It was going to be a long walk back to the ranch.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------

 

The first day was uncertain, and Aloy found herself cursing the lack of emergency supplies within her base at the ranch. She kept a modest amount of food and some healing herbs, but not nearly enough to fix  Nil as well as keep a safe emergency supply for herself. Taking stock of the situation, she had initially even pondered the logistics of saving Nil; he was not someone who seemed to value his own life very much and he had seemed rather nonplussed by her threats in the desert. Surveying his bloodied form, she even wondered if her knowledge of healing would be sufficient to prevent the many cuts, scrapes and gashes from becoming infected and killing him, regardless of any bandages and salves she might apply.

 

Still, as he groaned weakly in his unconscious state, Aloy could not help but feel a pang of sympathy for him. In the end, the majority of her bandaging cloths were used as well as her entire supply of wild ember and salvebrush, which left her with only a minor supply of ochrebloom and hintergold.

 

As his breathing steadied and his sleeping face became less contorted, however, she found herself filled with a feeling of contentment and satisfaction that had been a stranger to her since the defeat of Hades. She remembered fondly when any passing villager or traveling guard would pass their troubles onto her, and their grateful faces as she committed herself to helping as much as she could. As her status became elevated outside of her control, she found that these simple pleasures eluded her, and she became a stranger to the helpful traveling Nora that she had passively adopted as an acceptable persona. Only now did she realize how fulfilled it made her to help others in need, when the joy of such acts of kindness had been taken from her. Aloy did her best to not feel bitter at the estrangement her friends in Meridian had created after the battle at the spire, but the unfairness of it seemed so unnecessary.

 

In the quiet moments within the main room of the ranch house, Aloy found herself contemplating the nature of Nil’s behavior towards her. It was a welcome relief from her thoughts about what  she had left in Meridian. Unlike some, he had never glorified her, nor put her in a position of power she felt discomposed within. He accepted her skill with a bow, joined with her to fulfill a purpose and then seemingly disappeared. The most surprising thing about him was that he had bothered to show up at the battle of Hades at all; the act of allegiance seemed disjointed with the rest of his behavior. She laughed to herself, a strange feeling, as she remembered the wary talk of the guards as they watched him from afar. She didn’t know much of Carja history, but it seemed apparent that Nil being alive was somewhat of a mystery, considering his past battles.

 

The memory of their final talk before the battle was still fresh in her mind.

 

“Aloy. The told me your name. I said hair like a splash of blood, tenacious as a Scrapper’s jaws.” He seemed satisfied somehow, as if a piece of a puzzle he has been trying to solve had fallen into place.

 

It was confusing, hearing her name on his lips. How had she never realized that she never introduced herself? Moreover, why hadn’t Nil ever asked her name? She had considered in the moment questioning him, but he continued on, oblivious to her sudden abashment.

 

“I’ve thought about what you said. Every time, the wound you gave me caught on my ribs..” As he spoke, his face turned in a slight wince- whether genuine or for show, Aloy was not quite certain.

 

Aloy felt a spark of indignation, quickly attempting to push it down for the sake of professionalism. No sense in chasing Nil off over the technicalities of a battle never fought if he was willing to help during a battle that needed many ready hands. “But I… didn’t wound you.” Her voice came out tighter than she wanted it too, but he seemed oblivious.

 

“Not by metal.” His eyes shifted, some hidden emotion shining across the cold silver irises before he continued onward, speaking in his usual grisly fashion. Aloy bantered with him for a moment, allowing him to quiz her on her recent kills and lamenting that his biggest problem with large battles was the inability to properly count his kills. She wasn’t really listening, her brain stuck on his odd intonation when he spoke of their duel.

 

During the battle he had fought like the devil himself, his eyes shining in the harsh light of the battlefield. Always having fought beside him, Aloy had never gotten a chance to properly examine him in the heat of battle. "Between armor and flesh", or whatever he had called it. Sprinting to the spire, she had briefly faltered, her fears for her friend’s safety momentarily overpowering her route to the base of the plateau. His eyes had caught hers, coloured by the firelight around them. Time seemed to stop momentarily as he pounded arrows into a nearby longleg, until Vanasha’s voice rang out from behind him, urging her to continue. She thought that perhaps this was the death he had wished from her, and as she turned from him and continued her sprint, it nearly felt like a goodbye.

 

As it seemed to be with Nil, his goodbye was only an evasion until he inevitably found her again, scanning the sky over Meridian, far removed from a feast in her honor.

 

Aloy heard him, recognized his careful footsteps along the ridge of the rooftop as he climbed towards her. In the aftermath of the battle, her instincts abandoned her, and she allowed him to crouch above the flickering firelight of the city next to her.

 

He was silent at first, as if he too needed a moment alone and had somehow not noticed her. Several echoed songs from the feast below passed before his low voice traveled over to her. “They feast upon the blood of animal to wash their teeth from the blood of man. Are the offerings of the pleasure of flesh they give to you not to your liking, Aloy?”

 

Aloy resisted the urge to sigh and kept her voice even. “Not everyone is so concerned with death, Nil. They’re just happy to be alive.” She shifted on the rooftop, feeling out of place. Why did he find her if he only wanted to scold her for not enjoying the celebration? Her nerves grated like sand caught in armour.

 

“And you aren’t?” It was phrased like a question but coming from Nil it sounded like an accusation. He still wasn’t looking at her.

 

Aloy gritted her teeth, caught off guard. Before she could reply, Nil reached into his coat and pulled out a flask, offering it to her wordlessly. She searched his face and found something familiar reflected in herself. Aloy’s defensiveness melted and her numbness returned as she reached out. “It’s good to celebrate” she replied simply.

 

Nil shrugged, his face a mask. “Maybe for them, but not for us.” He sighed dramatically, gesturing out across the expanse of the Sundom. “There is no celebration for you and I at the end of a battle. We are creatures of blood. With none to spill, what is there for us?”

 

Aloy had scoffed in the moment, but her mind drifted to that conversation often in the days that passed. She could hardly think of Nil as a friend and yet he had known her more in that moment over Meridian than anyone else in the aftermath of the battle with Hades. They spoke no further but sat together in the shadow of the celebration until the last few citizens retreated to their homes. Her hazy judgement encouraged her to invite him back to Olin's home to sleep over the cover of the city with her. He declined, and in the morning, Nil was gone without a trace. It only took one week for Aloy to follow.

  
Looking down at Nil’s bruised body now, Aloy reflected that not much had changed about the man, at least physically. A few new scars yes, but the same impractical armour and mask of a face. Aloy had removed his headdress upon his arrival at the ranch, and she noted with interest that his hair was shorn on the sides, leaving a somewhat boyish tuft on the top. He was likely several years older than her, but unlike Erend, Nil seemed to have himself mostly figured out. Why was it, then, that he looked so young in his sleeping state?

 

Feeling somewhat uncomfortable at her close examination of him, Aloy spent the next day scouting for herbs and hunting, returning only when necessary to change his bandages and check to make sure Nil still breathed. On the third day, Aloy sat on the porch of the Ranch house, watching the sun rise as she usually did. A creak in the floorboard pushed her to her feet, bow instinctively in her hands and an arrow notched defensively. At the end of her aim was Nil, looking disheveled but coherent, his eyes fixed on Aloy.

 

With no sense of fear or hesitation, he stepped forward, his eyes seeming to take in the environment around him. “It’s like blood bubbling over the edge of a wound. A perfect first sight.” He mumbled, sounding appreciative. He was still unarmed and minimally clothed, and so Aloy lowered her bow.

 

A crease formed between her eyebrows as she stood, reminding herself that such bloody metaphors were only common for Nil. “The sunrise?” She clarified, briefly considering the idea that Nil may still not be completely lucid.

 

He frowned, searching her face, then cast his gaze on the morning rays of the sun behind her. “Yes, that too I suppose.” Then disappeared back into the doorframe, leaving Aloy feeling confused as the first rays of sun lit the earth behind her.


	2. Bandit Treasure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nil and Aloy get back to doing what they do best, killing bandits and uncovering mysteries.

Aloy stalked into the ranch house defensively, suddenly hyper-aware of Nil’s presence within her home. He had seemed to be doing better, but she wasn’t yet prepared for existing within the same space as him. She didn’t plan on him dying, necessarily... she just hadn’t thought far enough to when he would be living again.

 

She curved her body around a corner frame into a space in the home which she used for storage and stopped abruptly at the sight of Nil rummaging through the various compartments of the room, his nose wrinkling as he discarded various jars and bags. Aloy watched him for a moment, his posture mostly casual but his quick movements suggesting a sense of urgency; she realized with a start that she had no idea when the last time was that he had eaten, since she had no reliable way of supplying him with food in his unconscious state. He must be ravenous.

 

“Do you have meat?” Nil’s voice was rough, likely from disuse, which was somewhat unbefitting his smooth way of speaking. He didn’t look at her when he spoke, his full attention on the cabinets in front of him.

 

“Umm... Yeah, not a lot. I have some dried quail by my sleeping roll...” She stepped back as he turned and moved past her into the adjacent room, making a direct path to her corner of the large space. She followed behind him, annoyance starting to squirm up inside her belly.

 

He ignored her for the most part, squatting down and shoving his fists into her pack next to her sleeping roll. Bristling, Aloy stomped forward and reached out to grab his wrist, her voice terse “Hey, you can’t just- “

 

He reared back instinctively, maneuvering his hands on top of hers as she reached out in order to gain dominance over her. They escalated quickly from there, Aloy immediately tensing defensively, and twisting around to attempt to place pressure on Nil’s grip. He stood abruptly in response to her motion and they grappled for a moment, reflexively responding to each other’s reactive motions until Aloy finally wrenched his left arm, pinning him against the musty old wooden wall. He inhaled sharply as she pressed into his pressure points, and Aloy locked eyes with him, staring him down. They stayed immobilized for a few heartbeats, Aloy’s fierce glare burning into the hard reflective silver of Nil’s impassive expression. His face shifted slightly, an unfamiliar emotion passing over his face and Aloy recoiled a fraction enough for him to slither out of her grip.

 

“You hesitated.” Nil chided, and Aloy bristled defensively despite there being no hint of rapprochement in his voice. He didn’t move, waiting for her like a stalker without its cloaking mechanism, unsure of how to proceed.

 

“I saved your life” she rebutted sharply, unaccustomed to conversation and resistant of criticism. “In turn I expect that you’ll keep your hands to yourself, and out of my things.” She cut her eyes at him, daring him to make a move.

 

“Of course,” Nil replied, dropping out of stance. He made an expression that seemed to mimic a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Aloy’s suspicion heightened- he looked desperately out of practice trying to be convincingly human, and she almost laughed.

 

Instead she sighed sharply, loosening her position as well in a show of armistice. “Look, I’m not going to let you starve, but if you’re going to stay here, you’re going to need to… behave yourself.”

 

Nil’s eyebrows reached up into his head, and Aloy’s face burned. She thought about Rost for a moment, and how he used to use similar lines on her when she misbehaved.  But if Nil thought this unusual, or noticed her discomfort, he said nothing. Instead, he dropped down to sit on his haunches and Aloy quickly picked up on his fatigue. “May I share some food with you?”

 

She didn’t buy his unassuming mask, but maneuvered around him to pull her supplies out nonetheless.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------

 

Nil’s body ached, partially from the fatigue of starvation but also from the pressure of the huntress’s rough hands against his body. She moved with purpose, her feet planted solidly, mindful of the creaks and weaknesses in the floorboards beneath her. Such familiarity suggested she’d been in this ruin for maybe a half moon, by Nil’s approximation. Her eyes were sharp and her muscles full, meaning there had been ample opportunities for her to hunt and find food in her time here, and a lack of dangers to immobilize her. This meant that she was likely looking for something nearby and using this old ruin as an outpost. This confused Nil. What was there out here in the forbidden west for her?

 

She dropped a bag down in front of him and sat back several feet away, watching him as she bit into a ripe pinkish orange fruit, the juice dripping off her fingertips. He felt her eyes were locked on him, but he was too focused on the offering in front of him, and voraciously dug his teeth into the flesh instead, savoring the feeling of something solid hitting his empty stomach. He couldn’t begin to place when he last ate, but if he had to guess he would probably say about a week, counting the few days he seemed to have stayed in the huntress’s care.

 

When he first saw her in the desert, he thought it to be a hallucination of sorts, a result of him running out of water several hours prior in the hot sun. Nil wasn’t even sure it was her at first, just saw a plume of smoke and a woman of fire, hair cascading over her skull like rolls of sticky lava. He forced himself to trudge in her direction, deciding that he was finally going to receive a swift death in payment for a life of cleaning the sundom of its filth. Yet when he reached her, she hadn’t killed him. Why?

 

Digging out the last bit of meat, he picked his teeth with a bone pensively. Across the room, Aloy cleared her throat and rose to her feet, her eyes still on him. He waited patiently, gnawing against the marrow of the bone until she spoke. She seemed unsure, her gaze hard but hesitant, and it was several heartbeats before she spoke.

 

“I’m leaving” she announced, and shifted her feet slightly. Nil’s gaze slid over her. The huntress wasn’t carrying a substantial amount of supplies, so she would likely be back by nightfall. Why did she care to announce her departure to him? Surely she didn’t think he had any mind to pillage her outpost in her absence; Nil killed bandits, he had no desire to mimic their behaviors. She must expect him to follow...?

 

“Where are we going?” Nil inquired, stretching his arm to test the flexibility of the joint after she had twisted him earlier.

 

Her eyebrows knit together, and she tugged on a braid, twisting the lighter hair at the end between her fingertips. “We?” She took a step towards the door, switching out some weapons at the wooden frame. “Unless you have a death wish, Nil, I don’t see why you’d be doing anything but resting. You were nearly dead when I found you.”

 

He twisted his face in a frown to show her his displeasure. The idea of staying in the musty old ruin of a home wasn’t particularly appealing to him, especially with nothing to keep him occupied. However, he was reluctant to leave without absolving his debt to her, especially since she had been such a… useful partner to him in the past. The old wound in his chest throbbed, and he reminded himself that he could use her strength, just like old times. She didn’t seem to be doing anything important here anyway, why not team up again?

 

Nil altered his expression to something more amicable, but the huntress held up her hand to him. “I don’t want to hear it. Stay or go, but you’re not coming with me.” Her face twisted up, and she quickly covered it up with a scowl. “I’m not going to be responsible for your life again.”

 

He heard the beat of metal against the earth and sat for some time after he could no longer discern sound from outside the room. The heat was starting to beat down onto the home, and he shuffled to his feet, unable to sit still.

 

A cursory search of the home yielded few results that were any bit interesting. Many machine parts, a few maps, a little trinket here and there. Nothing that pointed to any goal in particular. The huntress seemed to just be living in the middle of the forbidden west alone, gathering only enough supplies to live off and nothing else.

 

“Why is she out here? How has she sat on her arrows for so long like this?” Nil murmured to himself, running his fingers over some kind of bone talisman among the huntress’s multitude of items. It seemed to be a Nora trinket, but he’d never seen her wear it, nor did she seem to have a particularly strong allegiance to the tribe of her alleged birth. Was everything she did outside of fighting irrationally large machines and bandits this nonsensical? He scratched at his head in irritation, his hair longer than he normally kept it due to his extended period of… inconvenience.

 

Tired of his exploration, he slithered back into the storage room in search of a knife. The huntress had given him an ultimatum, so he supposed he needed to make a choice.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------

 

Aloy wiped her brow, puffing out a hot breath of relief as she dismounted from the strider and gritted her teeth as she walked to the entrance to the farmhouse hauling both a bag of machine parts and meat. The unfamiliar flora and fauna of the west had provided her well enough with food, but she was too unfamiliar with the greenery of the land to find any reliable source of healing herbs. After using much of her stockpile on Nil, she was feeling somewhat uncomfortable with her ability to care for herself in the case of an emergency, and the pressure to move on was increasing by the moment. She supposed it was for the best, anyway, what with Nil now aware of her outpost, and her unsure of what to do with him.

 

Aloy cautiously stepped over the boundary of the doorframe, raising her voice hesitantly. “Nil…?” She wasn’t even sure if he was still there after her snap at him earlier, but she doubted it somehow. After waiting a few heartbeats, she proceeded to the storage room to compartmentalize her machine parts and prepare the meat for her evening meal. A sharp intake of breath greeted her at the doorway as she spotted Nil, abruptly twisting upright from the floor, and she tensed in surprise as she briefly reached for her bow before her mind placed recognition on his features.

 

They stayed caught for a moment, ensnared by the unusual nature of the moment. Hesitantly, Aloy broke the silence. “Were you… asleep in here?” Looking around the room, Nil was surrounded by what appeared to be a multitude of newly crafted arrowheads, bombs, potions and various other supplies. “Did you make all of this while I was gone?”

 

Nil yawned disconcertedly, scratching the back of his head as he quickly regained his easy composure. He had somehow freshly shaven the sides, and the hair on the top of his head was considerably shorter as well. A sheen of sweat trickled along his shoulders, freckled by bits of shorn hair which he had neglected to clean off. “You left me here alone all day with instructions not to leave. What did you expect me to do?” He mused, his voice muddled by sleepy boredom.

 

Aloy blinked and burst into laughter, stepping forward and examining his handiwork. “I don’t know, leave?” She turned a sling bomb around in her hands, eyeing its quality. After a moment of silence, she turned to face Nil, his expression guarded.

 

“I thought you wouldn’t want me to leave?”

 

Aloy was taken aback somewhat. What was that supposed to mean? Did he feel like he owed her something? “Oh, uhm...” she faltered, her eyebrows creasing together as they were wont to do. Had she told him that? “I don’t think I ever remember telling you to stay,” she offered instead, but he wasn’t persuaded by her diversion. Instead, he continued to watch her with an inscrutable expression, and she shifted her feet before proceeding with unpacking her supplies. “Thank you for making all of this. Do you think you might explain why?”

 

He stretched, moving to stand next to her. “I thought I might make you an offer,” he began, not looking at her as she examined some of the items she had packed home with her. He gave no further details, and Aloy recognized the distinct feeling of being baited.

 

 _‘Two can play at this game’,_ Aloy thought to herself, bristling somewhat at his calculative behavior. “Oh?” She offered, pretending to carefully scrutinize a machine lens in front of her.

 

As if sensing her counter-move, Nil switched tactics and turned to face her. “Aren’t you curious what force brought from me my offering of precious lifeblood at your doorstep?”

 

Aloy turned immediately, and cursed her curiosity. Nil gave her a crooked smile, signaling that he recognized his victory. Crossing her arms, Aloy gave him her full attention. “Fine, elaborate for me then. Who beat you up so bad you had to bleed on my floor for three days?”

 

Nil smiled wider in response, leaning forward and shifting his feet slightly in a way that was somehow completely familiar to Aloy. “Bandits.”

 

\------------------------------------------------------------

 

The camp was just like any other, inky smoke billowing into the sky like a tendril of death, spikes of wood clawing out of the earth around the perimeter of the camp guarding the filthy people within. Nil practically vibrated with excitement next to Aloy, and although she pretended to begrudge his excitement as usual, she too felt a sick sense of eagerness at the impending bloodshed. Not quite as much as Nil though, she reminded herself. She was just excited to do something other than wait.

 

He turned to her, silver eyes glinting in the dusty moonlight, and his ridiculous red headdress bobbed forward with the movement of his head. Aloy puffed out a gust of air, pushing one stray feather out of the space between them, and Nil’s smile widened in response.

 

Strange how genuine his expression seemed in the moment before he pounced. The skin around his gray eyes creased in a way they didn't normally when he flashed his teeth, and she realized for the first time that his eyes were one drop of blue away from Rost's. Aloy swallowed hard against an unfamiliar tension in her throat, and gestured her head forward. Nil nodded simply, pulling an arrow from its sheath along his back, and slunk further into the grass to follow her lead.

 

She had been surprised at first, disbelieving even at the idea that any group of bandits would have been able to take such a divisive blow against her normally diligent Carja partner. Nil had elaborated, detailing with some likely exaggeration the string of events which had left him out of supplies, low on water and weak to surprises which included ambushes by local groups of ne’er-do-wells. He had escaped the camp, but being half starved had left him ill-equipped to exterminate the group, and he had been forced to flee.

 

Aloy realized on their long ride to the camp exactly how close to death he must have been, and with some discomfort fully accepted the idea that she had, in fact, saved his life.

 

It wasn’t really a big deal, she’d saved lots of people’s lives during her travels as seeker. Directly and indirectly, especially so if you counted shutting down Hades. But she had never… spent extended time with those people in the past. It shouldn’t bother her, but for some reason it did.

 

A slick thunk broke Aloy out of her trance, and she resisted the urge to swear under her breath. She was doing that a lot lately- getting lost in her thoughts, lost in memories of the past. Nil shot her a confused look as he pulled his knife out of the chest of the bandit who had wandered into their patch of grass after Aloy had shot down his partner on the edge of the watchtower above. Sinking the blade into the man’s chest several more time for good measure, Nil slunk back into the grass and slithered over to Aloy, leaning in close enough for her to feel the heat radiating off his exposed flesh, the scent of blood washing over her.

 

“Ease your mind, huntress. Let the blood flow through your thoughts and clear your distractions,” he purred, and Aloy tensed reflexively. The lump in her throat returned and she gritted her teeth, nocking another arrow and moving forward out of the pervasive space Nil had created.

 

She cleared the sentry posted at each of the watchtowers, then turned her attention to the western gate of the complex, tapping her focus awake to count off her marks. The feeling of the device against her skull was both comforting and distracting. Inevitably, she had decided to re-equip it for their assault on the camp despite her lingering discomfort with the idea of Sylens listening in on her, mostly due in part to the damage the group had inflicted on Nil. He was a force to be reckoned with, and if they had brought him so close to death, she wasn’t taking any chances.

 

In the end, the camp proved to be less of a challenge than Aloy had hoped, which Nil casually attributed to the number of bandits he had managed to kill when he had been previously captured. It did, however, provide a unique reward in the captives who were freed from within the heart of the encampment. After getting over their obvious aversion to the sight of Nil, and after showering Aloy with their gratitude, they proved to be a wellspring of valuable information.

 

“Wait wait,” Aloy interrupted, pressing a thumb to her temple and wiping off a streak of already crusting blood. “You’re all from a settlement to the north of here? How far?”

 

One older woman who seemed to be taking lead over the other two captives frowned in thought, her dark brown eyes clouded. “I’m… not sure,” she began, licking her chapped lips thirstily. Aloy offered up her water flask and the woman drank eagerly before continuing with renewed vigor. “We were held within their caravan for several days before arriving here. The men who took us, they were outcasts, and I think they must have wanted something from us.”

 

Aloy waited patiently as the woman took another drink and then passed the flask back to the other two captives who stood behind her, also women but much younger. _‘Sounds familiar,’_ Aloy thought to herself bitterly, but kept her face even. “Tell me about your tribe, do you have anything like this where you come from?” Aloy questioned, tilting her head and gesturing with her finger to the focus resting against her cheek.

 

A younger woman with a round face and bright eyes gasped behind the leading captive, stepping forward towards Aloy. “You- You have a Goddess Shard! Mucko, look!” She stuttered, and at her exclamation the leading woman’s eyes widened and her eyebrows shot up into her forehead.

 

The older woman- Mucko, Aloy presumed- inclined her face at Aloy. “Where did you receive this artifact?” She reached her hand out to touch Aloy and squawked in indignation as a rough hand shot forward from over Aloy’s shoulder. Nil stood behind her, his mask of a face transformed into a warning glare.

 

“Nil!” Aloy growled indignantly, swatting his hand away. 'Awful presumptuous of him to think he has to protect me against some old woman.' She made a mental note to confront him about his unusual behavior later. “This is my focus,” she offered, turning her attention back to Mucko after a sharp look at Nil. “So, you are familiar with these sorts of devices. Is there a lot of this where you come from? Ruins of the old ones?”

 

Mucko looked taken aback by Aloy’s questioning, but steeled herself, taking on a guarded expression. “I’m afraid I cannot tell you. You will simply have to consult our chiefs.” The other two women fell in line behind her, their postures switching to that of someone who guarded something of high value.

 

Aloy scowled momentarily, but in her stomach, excitement began to bubble up. A small voice in her head signaled to her that this must be what she had been waiting for, and her fingers danced restlessly against her leg. “Fine, then can you take us to them?” Aloy entreated, offering the woman a small smile.

 

Mucko frowned, looking back at her companions. The two smaller women shook their heads fervently, eyes darting to Nil and back to Mucko. “Will this man of the sun be accompanying you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Now it was Aloy’s turn to be surprised, and she swung on her heel to face Nil, who wore a guarded expression. His declaration was firm, but he still turned his eyes to Aloy to seek confirmation. Before she could reply, Mucko’s voice sounded behind her.

 

“Then I am afraid I cannot guide you,” she confirmed, her voice hard. “If you wish to speak to our chiefs, you will have to seek the guidance of the goddess.” She raised her hand and pressed her index and middle finger to the side of her skull, the two women behind mimicking her. The gesture was a ghost of how Aloy usually tapped her focus, which only served to further pique her interest. “Find the gatekeeper and see through her eyes. She will show you the way, if you are worthy.”

 

 _‘Ugh. I guess cryptid messages are universal,’_ Aloy mused to herself crossly. Behind her, Nil snorted his contempt. “What stops her from following you?” He taunted, baiting the women against their perceived bravado.

 

Mucko scowled at him, breaking the façade of mysticism. “If you choose to follow us, then we will have no choice but to kill you.”

 

Nil turned to Aloy, and the look of amused disbelief in his eyes nearly made her laugh. She cleared her throat to keep her composure and turned her attention back to Mucko. “That won’t be necessary, but isn’t there any other information you can give us?”

 

The woman shook her head. “No. If your shard is truly goddess sent, it will be all you require.” Mucko then turned, her face somewhat remorseful, and ushered the other women forward with her large arms.

 

“Wait!” Aloy called, “You’re leaving right now? You should rest before making such a long journey!”

 

Mucko did not hesitate, but waved her arm back over her shoulder. “With salt in skin we shall meet again, Aloy! The sea waits for no woman.”

 

With that, the three women released an unusual sheer whistle through their teeth and waited patiently as three grazer-like machines charged up to them. Aloy watched, mouth agape, as they mounted the creatures and charged off into the distance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey wow look chapter two is up! Thanks again for reading, and wow big thanks to the few people who have already left kudos! You guys are awesome!
> 
> I'm going to try to post updates at least once a week, moving forward. My next semester doesn't start up again until August, meaning I should have ample time to write and story plan! On a side note, this fic will remain at a T rating until I post chapters with smut (which will be.. eventually. Its a slow burn guys!) But I do promise some good stuff if you're willing to wait for it :3c
> 
> Send me a hello on my blog, problematic-cinnamon-roll.tumblr.com ! Thanks so much again for reading!


	3. Tension

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloy and Nil begin their journey, following in the footsteps of the tribal women freed from the bandit camp. Along the way, they make some interesting discoveries, and start to learn more about eachother. Also: Nil tries his suave manipulative behavior on Aloy and she beats him up a little.

Nil’s eyes were trained on the form of the huntress over the crackling fire, the orange and yellow tendrils licking into the air and blending with the curls that cascaded over her shoulders. Perhaps he had been incorrect in his earlier assessment. Was she a creature of blood or fire? Could she be both?  
  
“What are you thinking about?”  
  
Blinking slowly, he refocused on her face, meeting her curious eyes. They had never stayed together after their bloody reunions, and as such he had never been forced to speak with her at length. Much to his surprise, her question didn’t bother him as much as it usually would; she didn’t strike him to be like normal people who were often uncomfortable with silence. They’d traveled with hardly a word passed between them to this point, so he felt the huntress had earned her question.  
  
“You,” he answered simply. In the dim firelight, he could vaguely make out a change in her complexion, and he tilted his head slightly in interest.  
  
She fumbled a moment, obviously expecting a different answer. “What are you _doing here_ Nil?” She demanded abruptly, clenching her fists together in front of her as she leaned forward ever so slightly towards him.

_Very interesting._

“Following you, of course.” This made her nose curl up, and Nil bit back a smile. She was so curious, and he could tell his minimalistic answers bothered her, which made the conversation even more tolerable. As he expected, she followed this prompt with another question.  
  
“Why?”  
  
Nil sat back, balancing on his haunches. Why indeed? Would it suffice for her to say that he was bored, and she seemed attracted to the kind of trouble he found enthralling? In truth, his motives were fairly simplistic, but she didn’t need to know that. Perhaps he could just make up some kind of reason.  
  
“You’re exciting,” Nil noted instead, surprising himself a little, and felt a satisfying curl in his stomach at her reaction. Her eyebrows knitting together, the messy way she clenched and unclenched her hands, the heat that rose up along her sharp cheekbones. She reached up and absent mindedly tugged on a braid, another unintentional motion he’d seen her make several times before, signifying irritation of some sort. Or maybe she was just thinking, Nil wasn’t quite sure.  
  
Standing abruptly, Aloy picked up the bow at her side and slung it over her shoulder in a rough motion. She wasn’t looking at him anymore, which irritated Nil slightly. Perhaps he’d miscalculated? He made a move to stand up as well, and she held out her hand.  
  
“I’m going to walk the perimeter, make sure there’s nothing out there waiting for us. I don’t really think that requires two people,” she stated, not waiting for an answer before stalking off into the darkness past their circle of firelight.  
  
Nil passively regarded yet again the way her hair mimicked the fire in front of him as she whipped her head around and it flared off behind her. Perhaps it _was_ fire, not blood. Nil hummed to himself in her absence. He really didn’t feel like waiting around for her again, and after counting to an insignificant number, he got up and stalked off into the night in the direction her footsteps had receded towards. He may not have the odd device she kept at her temple which seemed to give her an inhuman ability to track her prey, but he did have many years of perfecting his skills as a predator. She wasn’t focusing on being inconspicuous either, which made the task easier.  
  
Rounding one of the pillars of the camp, her footsteps began a neat line along the edge of the bandit’s fortress, skirting the border as she said she would. After a few moments of pressing into her prints, however, Nil still couldn’t hear her ahead of him, and he began to wonder if he was following the wrong set of tracks somehow. He decided it was nearly time to turn tail and retrace his steps when the telltale sound of rushing air came from above him. Nil ducked and rolled, narrowly avoiding a pair of heavy boots across his shoulders, and ducked low with his knife drawn. He could barely see Aloy in the suffocating dark of the new moon crouching across from him, but he could tell her face was drawn in a scowl.  
  
Nil opened his mouth to make a smart remark and she darted forward, fast like a viper striking with open jaws. He rolled backwards, kicking out his leg to throw her off balance but she was too quick, rounding on him and grabbing him at his ankle in an attempt to roll him onto his stomach. Excitement roared up from his gut into his chest at her challenge as he realized that he had fallen for her bait. He had miscalculated in the best kind of way.  
  
Pushing back on his forearms, Nil rolled his entire body, forcing Aloy to either let go or risk twisting the sensitive joint at her wrist to hold on to him. Hissing, she moved backwards and when he turned she was gone, not a sound in the night. Nil's heart beat faster as he realized she had disappeared into the tall grass adjacent to the wall of the bandit camp. He growled excitedly, never having been on the receiving end of the masterful stealth he had seen her deploy against their enemies so many times in the past. He knew he had no chance of finding her, and so he drew his other knife, crouching in anticipation for her to pounce. He didn’t have to wait long, as a crunch in the grass broke the silence over his left shoulder and he twisted to face her.

_“Messy.”_

A heartbeat too late he realized his mistake as her rough hands dug into his torso from the opposite side, fingernails digging for purchase along his chest as she held his arms back painfully behind him. A sharp pressure dug into the tender space between his shoulder blades as Aloy maneuvered her weight to press him down into the dusty earth. Letting out a harsh gust of air, he snarled into the dirt and cursed his eagerness. Nil had seen Aloy use this trick at several bandit camps in the past but had been too anxious to lay his knife into her flesh to think three or four moves ahead, as she had. Several feet ahead of his face, a rock lay in the grass where she had tossed it, drawing his attention away from her moments before she pounced.  
  
Behind him, he could feel her shaking, and he tensed with the changes in pressure she placed against his restrained body.  
  
She was laughing at him.  
  
“I can’t believe you were going to just let me kill you,” she managed between breaths, and released him after regaining her composure. Somehow, Nil couldn’t find it in himself to be upset. His blood pumped hot beneath his flesh, and he felt anxious at the lack of release. Where was the blood? Was she just going to sit there laughing at him? _What was going on?_  
  
Aloy rolled back away from him, her eyes sharp but glistening with humor as she watched for his next move. Recovering himself, he did his best to scowl at her through his excitement. Was this twice now he owed her for his life, then…? More than that, if he was really being honest with himself. Had she really out-maneuvered him this significantly?  
  
Her face broke into a rowdy grin at his irritated expression, and she broke off into a wild sprint away from him. “You’re on first watch, dead-man!” Her voice rang out wildly over the duty earth around them, and Nil realized, truly for the first time, that he was never in control of their partnership. With some trepidation, he realized he wasn’t exactly sure if that fact really bothered him.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------

Aloy yawned, biting into her morning fruit and squinting against the early sun. She always woke before first light, probably due to the strict regimen Rost kept her on for most of her life. She didn’t really mind; the sunrise was pretty, and it made so that she got the most of the light hours of the day. During her stay in Meridian she had noted that many of the Carja slept in past first light, and the Oseram spent more time awake and drinking into the evening than they did working in the morning. It seemed an unusual waste of time to her, but she tried not to judge their foreign habits. After all, who was she to determine what was “normal”?  
  
At least Nil seemed a capable enough traveling partner. When she woke she thought for a moment he might have fled in the night, but he returned shortly after her morning stretch with a pheasant for breakfast which now roasted over a small fire. They were quiet, and Aloy’s chest felt light with the easy companionship Nil seemed to be offering. She was nervous at first with his sudden attachment to her, but after their encounter last night she was feeling increasingly comfortable with his unexpected desire to accompany her. She still wasn’t entirely sure of his motives, what with his manipulative way of speaking to her, but she found she was not overly bothered. Nil was at least innocuous in his deceit, and consistent in the unusual way he regarded her. That was more than anyone had offered her since Rost. Most people wanted something from her, and more often than not their way of asking for it grated on Aloy's nerves. Nil didn't seem to have that effect on her. It was... refreshing.   
  
She stretched her arms high and her lower back released with a satisfying pop. It was a new day and a new step in her quest. “How’s that bird cooking? I want to get going as soon as possible,” she commented to Nil over her shoulder. He grunted in response, not fully awake yet. That was another thing about Nil she had begun to notice. He wasn’t much of a morning person, much like every Carja she had met, and his expressiveness seemed to fluctuate heavily with how long it had been since he’d last eaten. Aloy had thought that perhaps the ravenous way he had devoured the food she had offered him at the Sobeck ranch had been due to his near starvation, but in the times she had seen him eat in the following days he showed nearly as much fervor.  
  
Aloy scooted over closer to where he was sitting and pulled off the last bit of flesh from the core of her fruit, discarding the pit and licking the juice off her fingers. Nil turned to her, quirking his eyebrow mischievously. “What?” She countered, cocking her head to the side.  
  
“You’re so quick to wash the blood from your hands after our battles, and yet you’re always eating those messy fruits,” he explained, licking his lips subconsciously. Aloy squirmed under his scrutiny, unsure of how to react.  
  
“Well… yeah, blood is gross. And this fruit is delicious, they sell them at the market in Meridian and I guess they grow out here too?” Aloy made a popping sound with her mouth as she finished cleaning her last index finger, licking the last bit of juice off her chin with a swipe of her tongue. “Do you want one, is that it?”  
  
Nil’s eyebrows were so high up on his forehead Aloy was afraid he might lose them in his hairline. He shook his head, turning back towards his prize over the fire. “No. I don’t like fruit.”  
  
“What?” Aloy exclaimed indignantly. “You don’t like fruit...? You can’t just survive on meat you know,” she pointed out, remembering a similar lecture she received as a child. How exactly had Nil lived this long if he just shoved meat like a crazed man all the time without varying his diet...?  
  
Nil shrugged, her exasperation washing over him with no effect. His face had regained its bored composure, and he prodded the flesh of the quail, judging its readiness. Deciding it was fit, he pulled it off the fire to cool. Aloy watched him for a few moments more, examining his face with interest. He was rarely expressive, and often times when his face broke out of its mask it looked… oddly faked. Like he was just putting on a show. _Why put in the effort to pretend to feel some way you don’t?_  
  
He caught her eye for a moment, then turned away. “What are you thinking about?”  
  
Nil’s face was impassive, not making eye contact as usual, and he pulled a leg off the pheasant before sinking his teeth into it aggressively. His question caught Aloy off guard; Nil wasn’t the kind of person to start conversations, rather he would answer her questions in an attempt to appease her curiosity. If he was feeling particularly energetic, he would weave mazes with his words to confuse Aloy, or throw out a particularly bloody metaphor. This, however, seemed rather… innocent.  
  
Aloy jumped at the opportunity.  
  
“You,” she replied simply, trying to make her voice as aloof as possible. ' _Not so great, is it?'_ She wondered how he felt getting a taste of his own medicine.  
  
He shrugged. “Okay.”  
  
' _What?!'_ Aloy reeled back. ' _Shit, he’s good. Alright, play it cool Aloy.'  
  
_ She leaned back, resting her weight on her forearms while drumming her fingers on the hard earth and tried to think of a rebuttal. It was several heavy moments before she started to feel exasperated at her loss for words. Rost had only ever taught her to argue efficiently, this new method of conversational warfare was foreign to Aloy. She was normally quite good at coming up with snarky remarks.  
  
“You tug on your braids when you’re thinking, did you know that?”  
  
Aloy’s face burned. ' _Damn!'_ “Yeah, well, not everybody is made of stone like you”, she retorted.  
  
He raised his eyebrows, as if to show he knew how to use them, and then his face dropped back into its unreadable state. “Stone doesn’t bleed, I do,” he stated factually, as if Aloy actually needed to understand the distinction.  
  
“You could’ve fooled me,” Aloy remarked, crossing her arms in front of her. “Up until I dragged your sorry ass out of the desert, I don’t think I’d ever seen you bleed. I guess you just need me to watch your back.”  
  
She shot him a taunting smirk when he looked up but was taken aback when he shot her a self-satisfied smile of his own. “I humbly accept your offer of protection, huntress.”  
  
Aloy’s face dropped and she readied a hasty retort before Nil’s laughter broke into their squabble, the skin crinkling around the edge of his eyes. The words died in her throat at the formation of that strange lump, and she reached forward, ripping off a bite of meat from Nil’s pheasant and biting into it fervently. He regained his composure and watched her, fascinated once more.  
  
Feeling on the receiving end of a watcher’s intense stare, Aloy swallowed hard and stood. “Let’s get going, I don’t want to lose Mucko’s trail.”  
  
Nil cocked an eyebrow. “I thought you said you weren’t going to follow them?”  
  
Aloy huffed, smirking at him as she packed her supplies together for the road. “I told them that their threats of violence _wouldn’t be necessary_. Can’t kill what you don’t catch.”  
  
Nil smiled more intensely at this and pushed earth over the coals of their morning fire. “Lead the way, huntress.”

\------------------------------------------------------------

It was several hours of hard terrain before any variety started to show within the landscape, and even then it was more rough rocky outcroppings and sparse vegetation. In the distance, however, Aloy could see rolls of green hills, and her excitement only grew as they neared closer. At mid-day, they stopped to munch on leftover meat from Nil’s morning hunt, as well as what Aloy had left of dried berries and nuts from her stores at the Sobeck house. In the end, she left more than she would have liked at the outpost, but it was simply impossible to carry everything she wanted on foot. The strider she rode in from the east had served her well, but it wasn’t practical with two riders and tended to spook easily when hostile machines were nearby. She’d repaired it as best she could and set it off back east with the vague hope it may find a herd to join.  
  
Aloy still hadn’t fully decided what the ethics of such a situation were. Sure, it was just a machine, but after they’d been tamed they tended to give off a friendly, almost companionable aura. It was difficult to imagine the strider that she’d rode for several weeks, her only familiar face on the west, being destroyed by machines in its passive state.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Nil was watching her again, his face unreadable.  
  
Aloy sighed, setting her hands down away from her hair. “I just wish I would have been able to call a strider for you, the journey would be much easier if we could both ride.”  
  
Nil tilted his head, chewing thoughtfully. “Those prisoners called their mounts, why couldn’t you?”  
  
“I’ve never seen machines like those before,” Aloy admitted. “I’m not sure I could call them like I do the ones where we’re from. It’s… difficult to explain.” She doubted Nil would have any interest in hearing about the cauldrons, and how much trouble she’d gone through to conquer each of them in the Sundom. She wasn’t even sure he would understand, even if she did take the time to put it into words.  
  
Nil snorted next to her, shifting his weight to rest his arms leisurely over his bent legs. “Well, I don’t see how they could possibly be any better than you,” he said, his face plain in its sincerity. “Why don’t you try?”  
  
Aloy smiled, surprised at the compliment from Nil. It wasn’t the first time he had acknowledged her abilities, but it felt sweeter in this moment when she felt somewhat beaten by the hot sun. “Okay,” she replied, pulling her hands to her face like she’d seen Mucko do the previous night.  
  
She blew hard into her hands, repositioned, then tried again. This repeated for several moments before she began to feel frustrated, her hands sweaty under the merciless sun and her fingers impatient. Nil watched her attentively, watching for how she positioned herself, humor dancing in his steely eyes as she became increasingly agitated. Eventually Aloy sighed in exasperation, turning to him irritably.  
  
“What?” She said, eyes cutting daggers.  
  
Nil noncommittally hummed in response and brushed his hands through the dirt for a moment before cupping them to his face as he had seen Aloy do moments before. He let out a low, even breath and adjusted his fingers slightly for several moments before a low hollow sound was produced. Aloy jumped from her seat in the dirt, maneuvering over closer to him.  
  
“How did you do that?!” She turned her head over and around several times to examine the placement of his fingers. He split his hands open in front of her, revealing a single blade of coarse grass trapped between his thumbs.  
  
Aloy gawked for a moment before scowling, her cheeks reddening. There was no way he could have guessed at the technique with such accuracy. “If you knew how to do it this whole time why didn’t you just tell me?”  
  
Nil’s gaze was even, if not for the amusement in his eyes. “I didn’t realize that’s what it was until I saw you make the motion with your hands,” he explained, holding out the grass. “I knew soldiers who used to be able to play quite complicated strings of notes on leaves and other foliage.”  
  
Aloy plucked the grass from his fingers, uncertain which she was more curious about; Nil’s time in the war or whether he knew any songs to play. Deciding that calling the machines was probably the more reasonable option, she pushed the blade of grass between her thumbs and pressed her mouth to them, blowing softly, then harder.  
  
Nothing happened.  
  
Huffing testily, Aloy adjusted her fingers before continuing again, moving her mouth around against her thumbs in an attempt to coax the grass into behaving. She groaned, throwing her head back over her shoulders and collapsing backwards into the dirt. Nil made it look easy, and that irritated Aloy more than anything. She hated it when other people were better at things than her, especially simple tasks. This seemed at least minimally useful, why hadn’t anyone taught her this before now?  
  
Calloused hands rested onto hers and Aloy jerked her head up, glaring at Nil. He stared back at her, his face inscrutable, and grabbed her hands more firmly, pulling her up from her defeated posture against the earth.  
  
“Like this,” he instructed, pulling the blade taut between her thumbs and smoothing them together. Aloy marveled at the gentleness of the hands of perhaps the most efficient killer she had ever known smoothing over her thumbs carefully.  
  
“Got it?” Nil asked, his voice breaking her out of her thoughts. His face was intent, searching for her comprehension.  
  
“Uhh,” Aloy managed, her throat tight again. She brought her thumbs up to her mouth again, giving an exploratory breath of air. Nothing.  
  
“No,” Nil murmured, shaking his head. He took her hands forward again and bowed them forward to angle towards him. “Like this.”  
  
He pursed his lips, resting them firmly over the opening between Aloy’s thumbs and blew out a steady gust of air. Her thumbs vibrated and a short note was produced before she drew back her hands abruptly.  
  
“Ah!” She exclaimed, dropping the blade at her feet. “Shit, that tickled,” she commented, rubbing her hands together. Her face burned, and she pushed herself back a few steps to settle her nerves. Picking up the blade again, she smoothed it out between her thumbs as she had seen Nil do, and pursed her lips to mimic his. Taking a deep breath, she released slowly and the thread between her hands hummed weakly.  
  
Aloy’s breath came out in an excited huff and her eyes searched up for Nil’s, who was watching her intently. He gave her a curt nod, and she turned her face back to the blade between her fingers. It took several attempts, but after some time she could produce a little sound quite reliably. Shifting her thumbs, she found she could produce higher or lower notes, which she concluded must have been how the women from the night before had created the unique series of notes which had called the machines to them.  
  
“We should keep going,” Aloy finally commented after fiddling with different strands of grass for some time. Nil nodded amicably, as if he didn’t really care one way or another, and they set off on foot again with Aloy testing the blades as she walked. Nil didn’t seem to mind the lack of conversation, and followed beside her at an easy pace, his face relaxed.  
  
After several more hours of travel, Aloy turned to Nil and stopped, licking her lips before speaking. “I think I’ve finally got it,” she announced, her eyes sparkling with pride.  
  
Nil nodded, laying his pack down and waiting patiently. Aloy took a deep breath and picked out one of the coarser blades, which seemed to produce a clearer sound more reliably. Fixing it between her thumbs, she let out a long gust of breath and shifted her hands ever so slightly at her mouth. The resulting sound was nearly identical to the call which the women used, and Nil raised his eyebrows appreciatively.  
  
Aloy froze, her head cocked to the wind, and waited. One minute. Two. Three…?  
  
She frowned deeply after a few moments, avoiding Nil’s gaze. “It was worth a try I guess,” she sighed, moving to pocket the grass.  
  
Nil reached out, laying a hand across her forearm. “Try again. Louder.”  
  
Aloy swallowed hard, but cleared her throat and resumed her stance regardless. Taking a deeper breath, she blew more forcefully into her palms, and although the resulting sound was slightly higher in pitch, it was also much louder. Her heart pounded in anticipation, and Nil’s eyes widened, focusing over her shoulder.  
  
Turning, she spotted a dust cloud in the distance, moving in their direction. It came from the direction of the green hills she and Nil had been approaching for several hours. Aloy inhaled sharply and reached for her bow instinctively as an unfamiliar beast of machinery approached them. It was tall, structured somewhat like a grazer but much heavier. The spindly blade attachments which grazers normally sported were replaced with larger, hand-like bands of metal with closed apertures attached at the top. The chambers of the machines body were wider as well, seeming to serve as a secondary containment unit. As the beast neared closer, Aloy withdrew her Ropecaster, and shot a singular tie down at the neck when it neared within range. A grinding screech resounded through the air and the machine reared back on its hindlegs before settling back, head low.  
  
Aloy exchanged a look with Nil and tapped her focus to scan the foreign machine. The interface of the focus helpfully supplied that the machine in front of her was a “Seeder”, a type of terraformer which harvested and distributed various seeds to the land. Weak to fire damage, several emblazoned parts along the machine’s head and back signifying weak points. Aloy prodded its form with her spear and was surprised to see the machine respond tamely, descending its head down to tap the device with it’s head.  
  
“Can you control it?” Nil asked, breaking the tense silence.  
  
Aloy shook her head. “No, I don’t… have the information I need. It should react differently. But it doesn’t seem aggressive?”  
  
As if to demonstrate its willingness for cooperation, the machine bent down each of its long legs and presented it’s wide back to her, gears churning warmly.  
  
“Those women didn’t have any device for taming the machines, and the only tool they seemed to use was that whistle,” she reasoned, thinking out loud. “Maybe the machines in the west are just tamer?”  
  
Nil seemed uncertain when she turned her head to confer with him, but he shrugged affably. “I trust your judgement.”  
  
Nodding, Aloy swallowed hard and cut the rope tying the machine down. It shook its head violently for a moment before resuming its previous position. She released a low breath and slid her legs over the back of the main chamber of the body. Abruptly, the machine stood and took a few steps backward to gain it’s footing with the new weight.  
  
“Woah!” Aloy exclaimed, digging her heels into the side of the machine as she did with striders. The seeder stilled with a few groaning mechanical noises, and Aloy let out an excited breathy chuckle. She leaned over and extended her hand to Nil, a smile splitting her face. “Are you coming?”  
  
Without hesitation he reached up and heaved himself behind her, huffing somewhat uncomfortably before settling behind her. Aloy focused on her breathing for a moment, uncertain of how to feel with Nil so close at her back. If he expressed any similar discomfort, though, he said nothing.  
  
Gently, Aloy eased the seeder forward at an easy pace, bringing it up to something a little brisker once she felt she had the hang of things. The machine had a gait that wasn’t necessarily gentle, but wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as some of the other machines Aloy had attempted to ride. It seemed to handle their combined weight well, which was an added bonus, considering Aloy had certainly tried to mount machines in the past that definitely weren’t meant to handle the load of a full grown human.  
  
They rode at an efficient pace for several hours, following the path the previous riders had taken, even as it snaked consistently to the west. Aloy felt increasingly uncomfortable with the trajectory of the path, and hoped Nil didn’t share her apprehension. Hadn’t Mucko and the others said they were from a tribe north of the bandit camp? Aloy was nearly ready to call the journey to a halt so she could stop and re-evaluate options when Nil spoke up from behind her.  
  
“Do you smell that?”  
  
Aloy wrinkled her nose, slowing the seeder to a stop. There was a tang in the air, somewhat familiar but a flavor she couldn’t quite place. “Yeah… I hear something weird too.”  
  
Now that the seeder had stopped its progression, Aloy could faintly make out a roaring in the distance. It was consistent and low, somewhat like the sound of a large river. She shifted her weight, her legs protesting the change in position after many hours of riding. “What do you think it is?”  
  
Nil shook his head, deadpan. “I don’t know, but I think we should find out.”  
  
Aloy nodded, easing the seeder forwards once more. As they followed the trail, the sound continued to grow louder and the scent in the air more pervasive. After a time, the rocky terrain faded into grassland interspersed with sand. Aloy’s eyes widened, and she moved her head to the side of the machine’s neck in order to get a better look.  
  
“I… you’re seeing this too, right?” She murmured back towards Nil, who shifted slightly behind her.  
  
Ahead of them was a vast expanse of water, swallowing the sun inside its sunset red waters. Spires of metal and shiny long tentacles surged out intermittently against the waves. White and gray gulls circled out above the pillars, diving in and out of the coursing waves. Finally, something clicked in the back of Aloy’s mind and she sucked in a breath through her nose, her brain rattling with confusion.  
  
“Salt. It’s a huge lake of salty water.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You'll notice this chapter is being posted on a Friday, and all updated following this posting will also be on fridays (unless otherwise noted). I'm so excited that things are finally starting to come into swing! I can't wait to write more of Aloy and Nil's relationship developing, as well as getting into the meat of the plot that I have set up! Still not sure at this point exactly how long the fic will be- originally I planned for it to be roughly 20-25 chapters, and I will try to stick to that!
> 
> Also, please excuse the expedited travel time. It's no fun to write "and then they traveled for 3 days", and honestly I believe that rising sea levels are a pretty probable side effect of destroying the earth's natural habitat so bad that you need specifically designed robots to fix it. So I'm estimating that the travel time from the Sobeck Ranch (thought to be somewhere near Carson City, Nevada) to the coast of California is significantly shortened.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beach episode! No really. Aloy and Nil spend some time at the beach, talk about feelings and experience a particularly cold evening together. Nil deals with some new feelings he might be experiencing, and Aloy opens up about her past.

The young moon cast down weak silvery rays onto the choppy waters ahead, making the ocean appear like a dark blanket being twisted underneath hundreds of shining pieces of metal. The breath caught in Aloy’s chest as she descended off the seeder, haphazardly dropping her bags on a sandy part of the beach which she and Nil had decided was most easily secured, in case of attack. He eased himself off the machine as well, eyeing the body of water suspiciously as he began to set up camp.  
  
_Ocean._  
  
The word rang out in Aloy’s head again. At first, she had been perplexed by the strange salty body of water; it was more expansive than any lake she had ever seen, with no end in sight.  She had searched through all her notes saved within her focus, finally coming upon the word for this phenomenon of expansive water.  
  
“I think this is… the Pacific Ocean,” she concluded, pulling out the small globe she had taken from Elizabet at the ranch. “We traveled west and arrived here, see? The place where we live, the old ones called it ‘America’, it’s this big stretch of land here…”  
  
Nil seemed interested, which was a rarity, and Aloy explained all she could to him of the geography of their world. She wasn’t entirely certain that the world looked exactly the way it did in the times of the old ones, especially after the Faro robots destroyed and rebuilt most of the planet, but it made sense that the land shapes would stay mostly the same.  
  
Nil’s eyes widened at one point, turning his head to search his gaze out over the water. “It’s just as they said,” he murmured, and Aloy leaned in curiously.

“These lands are called the forbidden west to my people for a reason,” he explained with a gesture to the ocean next to them. “Many Carja traveled into the lands past the Daunt, but few returned, and those who did were driven mad by whatever they found.”  
  
Aloy nodded, her brows furrowing in thought. “Yeah, I think I remember reading about that somewhere, but what does that have to do with the ocean? Is it dangerous?”  
  
Nil shrugged. “Not necessarily. Several expeditions reported limitless sweeps of blue sand that seemed to reflect the sky above, broken only by the remains of ancient machines,” he recounted, scratching his chin in an attempt to remember more details. “Others told of a lake one hundred times the size of the Daybrink-- so wide the far shores could not be made out, and so deep that an entire city of the ancients stands drowned within. The water is sour to the taste, and sickening, and it was said to rise up and push back against those who attempted to cross.”  
  
Aloy sat leaning forward, enraptured. “The two must be the same, right? I’ve never heard of blue sand before.”  
  
 Nil’s eyes looked far away, as if he were recounting a lesson learned in another life. Seeming to notice her again, he shook his head, giving an affable shrug. “I always thought it tales to prevent more men from traveling into the sand and dying unnecessarily. Guess it was true, in a way.”  
  
The two turned together and stared out over the black expanse, the waves lapping against the shore a short distance from their feet. It really was beautiful, and Aloy suddenly felt thankful that she had chosen to leave Meridian in search of adventure. In the quiet moment, Aloy sifted through her focus again to find the entry she remembered recounting the tales of the forbidden west, and re-read through them as Nil began to set their camp. It was as he said, many stories of immense interest burdened with the threat of death and madness. Still, she remained curious about the true nature of the lands, and especially so the expanse of water before her. How dangerous was it _actually_ , to a capable adventurer like herself?  
  
Aloy got up from where she was seated, watching the ocean. Curiously, she removed her boots and dug her feet into the sand. It was… thicker somehow than the sands of the Sundom, and less sharp than the rocky landscape near the Sobeck ranch. Shells of small animals littered the earth leading up to the water’s edge, and Aloy picked one up to examine it closely. It was ribbed on one side with a smooth curve underneath, and the creamy white was splashed with waves of a light pink.  She hummed thoughtfully and pocketed the item, adding it to her small collection of trinkets.  
  
The soft breeze off the water sprinkled her face with a salty mist as it danced off the white foam of the waves and Aloy cautiously licked her lips. ‘ _Salt, what a surprise’._ Pursing her lips and exhaling deeply, Aloy stepped towards the edge of the water. A quick scan with her focus showed that Nil’s recounting of the city under the waves had been correct, but nothing animated showed along her line of sight. Feeling satisfied, she clicked off her focus and placed her left foot into the water.  
  
Nil stirred behind her, and Aloy turned to see him half-risen in a protective crouch. His eyes were fixed on her, and Aloy felt for the first time the beginnings of a shiver down her spine at his solicitous nature towards her. She wasn’t someone who needed to be guarded, but it still felt… nice. Nodding at him, she turned back around and moved further into the water. Somehow, the advance into the strange ocean felt safer with him at her back, and she was grateful for his presence.  
  
The sea was cold, though not nearly as chill as some of the mountain-fed streams she had swam in as a child. Unlike Nil’s recounting of Carja tales, the water did not push aggressively towards her but rather flowed around her ankles like a curious beast. It did have a certain ebb, however, and after a moment the water receded from her feet leaving the sand below her tacky and drained. Aloy hummed curiously and continued forward, gasping slightly as a new wave of water pushed forward and coursed around her calves, deeper this time. It wasn’t all that unpleasant, though, and she found herself smiling as the foam clung around the soft hairs at her legs, leaving a cloudy pattern as it receded again.  
  
“I think the Carja got this one wrong, Nil,” she said, turning to him with a smile and kicking her leg through the water. “This is actually... really nice. Although it is salty, so I wouldn’t drink it.”  
  
Nil frowned pensively and shook his head. “That’s fine, but I’ll give it a hard pass.”  
  
Aloy laughed, eyeing him wickedly. “Are you… scared?  
  
His frown deepened, the edges of his mouth creasing into the skin at the edges of his chin, and he seemed reluctant to make any particular move.  His face seemed to indicate he thought she should leave, but he made no move to correct her. “We should hunt for dinner,” he said instead.   
  
Aloy rolled her eyes, and turned to walk towards him. The sand clung to the skin around her feet and ankles, the salty water having given her a sticky texture. Her body tensed slightly as a fresh wind came off the water, chilling her calves where her shorn boots had exposed her flesh.  
  
No sooner had she exited the water that Nil tensed in front of her, jumping to his feet. Aloy turned just in time to spot the curve of a mechanical appendage recede into the waves, maybe 30 yards off the shore. She gulped, chuckling nervously and clipped on her focus.

Nothing. _Nothing?_  
  
Aloy remembered with a start her frustration the first time she encountered a Stormbird. How she had tried repeatedly to scan it in vain until finally she resorted to coaxing it within range with her arrows. The large machine had been well within reach for its attacks, but the scope of her focus had been too short to identify it to Aloy. She wondered now, with a sense of something akin to anxiety, what exactly could be lurking out in the water beyond her focus’s reach, large enough to pounce but hidden by the choppy waves.  
  
Aloy turned back to Nil, his face turned down in a deep grimace, halfway torn between ‘I told you so” and ‘what the fuck was that’?  
  
Instead of giving him any kind of answer for the strange occurrence, she shrugged at him.  “Okay, let’s hunt for dinner!”  
  
They made quick work of catching a few of the gulls that swarmed the beach. The flock was cacophonous around them when they harvested their few birds, and then they were forced to move further up the beach to avoid the aggressive retaliation of the remaining members. Building a fire was the easiest part of the night as the beach was littered with a multitude of dry, salted wood. At Nil’s insistence, they set up camp a safe distance from the water’s edge, and Aloy did her best not to roll her eyes at his caution. Since when had he been the careful one?  
  
Yawning, Aloy curled up into the dying warmth of the sand, which had begun to cool in the absence of the sun. She watched Nil with sleepy amusement as he carved into his bird, spitting out pieces of tough flesh into the fire where they sizzled and popped. He had a grisly way of doing things, but Aloy couldn’t help the feeling of affection that bloomed in her chest at his enthusiastic eating. He was cute in a way, she mused to herself, and was startled at the thought. When had that happened…? Chirps of insects rang out peacefully in the night around them, and soon Aloy had drifted off, her last sight the blurry starscape above her.  


\------------------------------------------------------------  


Nil stoked the fire with several more pieces of driftwood and sighed into the cold night air. The roaring of the ocean grated against his skin and he shivered uncomfortably, scooting closer to the fire and groaning. He didn’t sleep well normally, but this was an exceptionally unsatisfactory place for a camp. He shot a glance towards the inky depths to his left, his skin crawling with unease at the though of Aloy stepping into its precarious depths again.  
  
He admired her recklessly adventurous spirit and her insatiable curiosity, but at times he felt conflicted in his desires. The longer he stayed in her company, the more he felt a sense of possessive protection over her; she had chosen to accept him as her companion, after all, and he owed her his life. More than ten times over, if he was being realistic. He loved the thrill of watching her take risks; the way she handled danger effortlessly and left a wave of destruction and victory in her path was intoxicatingly attractive. But machines and men were one thing. Aloy seemed to have an uncanny ability to attract unfathomable dangers to herself, a skill which Nil had originally believed to be an exciting benefit of being her partner, but which now began to feel like a curse.  
  
Nil would be happy to kill bandits and some demonic machines with Aloy at his side until he inevitably died in battle, as he had always imagined. Getting sucked into the depths of the most notoriously dangerous body of water, the focus of many nightmarish Carja tales? That wasn’t necessarily part of Nil’s plan. Dying, sure, but not drowning in poisonous inky depths.  
  
He searched the beach a while longer, picking up another armful of firewood and scanning for anything that may be a danger to them. He paid close attention to the water, watching for any sign of the mysterious blade of metal that had glinted menacingly at them earlier. Thankfully, the beach seemed cleared of any metal beasts, and the machine that had carried them had long since disappeared into the night. Unlike the others he had seen the huntress ride, this one didn’t seem to have any allegiance to her, rather it just seemed to be cooperative. This didn’t appear to bother the huntress much, but it was very unsettling to Nil. It was all so unusual and foreign to him. He had grown up destroying or avoiding machines, and to see her interact with them so closely was… unnatural, even for him.  
  
Still though, it was her unusual nature that drew them together, so he tried not to be too begrudging of her eccentrics. After all, if she were any other woman she’d have likely fled by now, scared off by his ghoulish nature or his pleasure in killing. Even now, Nil sighed in contentment at the memory of the bandits’ blood washing over his hands the day before. He tried to focus on this memory instead of his nagging anxiety at the crashing of the waves. Their fear and defeat draining out into the dusty earth, drinking up the failure of their battle. Nil smiled to himself; they thought him for dead, and yet he came for them just as he promised, slicing the arrogance from their faces. Literally, in some cases.  
  
Nil plopped down onto the sand next to the dying fire, feeling peacefully centered after his walk on the sands reliving his delicious victory. And there across the fire lay his bandit slaying queen, her hair splayed out around her head like blood frozen around a break in the skull.  
  
He frowned, examining her closer; her arms curled around her body and her mouth turned down in a scowl in her sleep. Brushing his fingers backwards across her cheek, she stirred in her sleep but did not break out of her huddled pose. Nil hummed with dissatisfaction and coaxed the fire back to life, hoping to bring some heat back into her chilled body, and searched through his pack for a blanket.  He didn’t blame the huntress her unpreparedness, the shore had seemed balmy and comfortable in the daylight, but it seemed that when the ocean swallowed the sun it sucked the heat from the earth as well, blowing in a chill wind from lands too far for his eyes to see. Another reason for him to dislike it, he decided.  
  
Sighing, Nil determined that the fire was adequate, and shuffled over to the huntress, draping the blanket across her sleeping form and rested against the sand behind her, his legs splayed lightly against her back. Normally, she was a fairly light sleeper, but the sound of the ocean must have lulled her into a deeper place of rest. Nil envied her relaxation at the mouth of such a dangerous beast for a moment, then reminded himself that suspicious caution was always the better option.   
  
He refocused his eyes on the fire and kept his ears open, though he relaxed somewhat at the assurance of his huntress’s comfort. He could care less about whatever ghost they were chasing to the north, he only cared about getting his next chance to dance in the heat of battle next to Aloy, watching her fiery hair fly behind her as she deftly pulled the life from her enemies. As if she could sense his admiration, Aloy let out a long breath in her sleep and uncurled her body to press in more firmly to Nil’s warmth behind her. He frowned, a tightness forming in his chest. It was an unfamiliar feeling that he was only starting to grow accustomed to. It was akin to something like protectiveness, or the feeling he got when some other vigilante felt like they could clear out a bandit camp before him. Not quite jealousy or envy, just… want. Aggressive desire.  
  
Nil traced his fingers against her cheekbone again and she hummed in her sleep, eyes dancing behind her lids to chase some specter of her dreams. She looked warm, and he felt warm as well in the dim orange of the firelight. His fingers tangled into the strands of her hair flayed about her skull; it was coarse and tangled in parts, and he pulled a stray twig from one braid. Nil caught himself smiling and was perplexed at his own behavior. What was it about this wild savage woman with unbrushed hair like fire which captivated him?  
  
Sighing, he turned his body as well and laid down next to her, feeling peaceful and conflicted at the same time. The stars glittered emotionlessly above him, the moon just a sliver in the sky. He snorted, examining the small cut of yellowish white in the sky, it’s cold rays barely touching the earth. If Aloy was the sun, then he supposed he was the moon. Cold and glinting like steel in the darkness behind her, living in the wake of her scorching fire. It was fitting, after all; the moon rarely ever caught the sun.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------

 

Aloy groaned, her right shoulder stiff against the cold sand beneath her, which contrasted against the pleasant warmth against her back. Confusion swarmed in her groggy mind, surprised that she had somehow slept in long enough for the sun to begin warming her aching shoulders. Opening her eyes, she was startled to see that the sky was still an inky purple, with the first signs of sunrise just beginning to melt off the night in the east. She shuffled in her confusion, and a muffled groan sounded behind her.  
  
Aloy shot out of the sand, rolling away from the noise and crouching low in a defensive position. Mirroring her across the bones of the fire was Nil, the tuft of hair at the top of his head poking out at an odd angle and sand still crusted against the side of his face. His face relaxed as he examined their surroundings, and after a moment he sat back in a loose position.  
  
“What’s going on?” He asked, finishing his sentence with a long yawn.  
  
Aloy sputtered, unsure of how to reply. “Were you sleeping next to me?”  
  
Nil looked at her like she had asked him if water was wet. “Yes.”  
  
She felt her cheeks heat and the tips of her ears burned. “I… what? Why? Don’t do that!”  
  
“Oh,” he said, chewing on his cheek. “You were cold, should I have let you suffer in the embrace of the wind?”  
  
Aloy blinked several times and caught sight of the blanket at his feet. She hadn’t noticed it immediately when she had woken up, the unusual feeling of a presence at her back surprising her into action. As if to support Nil’s logic, a cutting gust blew in over the sea, sending a cascade of goosebumps along Aloy’s arms and legs.  
  
“…No,” she finally replied, shuffling back over and draping the blanket over her shoulders like a shawl. The residual heat had been lost from the fiber, but it at least made for a barrier against the gusts from the water. Together they built the fire back to life and huddled against it as the sky turned from a sickly orange to a gray blue. Aloy sniffled against her morning fruit and turned to look at Nil between bites.  
  
He was huddled in on himself, his small vest doing nothing to hide his exposed chest from the chill that peppered his skin with goosebumps. She realized with a start that he must have given her his own blanket. Aloy felt a pang of sympathy and guilt at having been so coarse with him and when he caught her eye, she opened the blanket to him. Without hesitation he scuffled over the sand to her and crouched under their shared cover, absorbing the heat from the fire. Aloy’s mind felt peaceful at his presence, the flesh of his tanned arms slowly warming up against hers as they ate.  
  
Examining him between bites, she noted that his cuts were almost completely healed, and though they had scarred in several places Aloy felt that she had done the best she could to take care of him with what she had. They hadn’t found any more healing herbs that Aloy recognized during their journey, which made her a bit uneasy, but she did her best to brew hearty potions to make up the difference when she could.   
  
Looking out as she thought, Aloy noticed that the ocean was choppy in the morning sunlight, and the mottled blue of the sky reflected into the waters, casting them in a grayish foamy overcast. The color reminded her somewhat of Rosts’s eyes, which would be a steely gray if not for the light drop of blue they held. Aloy liked to think that was a good metaphor for the man; hard and cold at times, but with a soft nurturing undertone.  
  
“Rost and I used to share a blanket like this, when we would go out on long hunting trips.”  
  
Aloy’s cheeks colored, the words slipping out before she could stop them. Nil turned his head to her, a thin bone extending out from between his chapped lips.  
  
“Sorry,” Aloy started, turning her face away from his to look out at the ocean. “The water, it just... reminds me of the color of his eyes. They were really unique,” she explained, a fond smile playing on her lips. Many of the people she had left along the road had brown or occasionally blue eyes, but gray seemed to be an uncommon color. Pursing her lips, she considered Nil’s eyes; had she seen any other Carja with silvery gray eyes like him…? The girl from the meridian estate, Elidia, her eyes had been grayish… but she too, if Aloy remembered, had a faint tint of something akin to green in her depths. Ligan, were his eyes gray as well? They were the only two Carja of the hundreds that she had met that seemed to share Nil’s steely gaze.  
  
“Your eyes are unique as well. It must run in the family,” he stated simply, breaking into her thoughts.  
  
Aloy flushed and shook her head. “Umm… thanks, but we weren’t related by blood. Rost just kind of took care of me until…” She swallowed hard, fidgeting her fingers back and forth. “Until he didn’t need to anymore.”  
  
Nil was quiet, searching her face. Much like anyone else, Aloy realized he didn’t know very much about her past. She didn’t offer to share, and the people she met rarely ever seemed interested enough to ask. He nodded curtly, throwing his last few bones into the fire. “Why don’t you tell me about it, while we ride?”  
  
Her eyes widened and she nodded, grateful for his interest and surprised at his initiative. Nil plucked a long blade of grass from the sand dune next to him and handed it over to Aloy, who smiled at him in response. His face remained still, but the edges of his eyes crinkled at her warmly as she called for a machine to carry them. Another seeder answered quickly, and although it was impossible to know for sure, Aloy greeted it with familiarity and warmth. No reason to be callous if the machine was willing to carry them for long distances, and she gave it a quick once-over to check for any minor repairs she could make.  
  
Much to Aloy’s disappointment, the harsh winds from the previous night had blown over any trace of the tribal women’s trail from the previous days, and so their only guidance was to travel north, following the horizon of the ocean next to them. Aloy talked through most of the journey, taking pauses every now and then to gather her thoughts or bite back a particularly powerful emotion. Nil listened passively through the ride, nodding every now and then but never asking for further details or clarification. He seemed pleased with whatever Aloy wanted to give him, and she was fine with that.   
  
His eyebrows did raise comedically high, however, when she asserted that the myth of her birth was true. She was in fact born of a mountain, although it was a bit more complicated than the tales would tell.  
  
Aloy was in the middle of trying to explain her search for a way to repair Gaia when her focus let out a short chirp, cutting her off mid-sentence and causing her to straighten her posture. Her heart hammered wildly in her chest for a moment and she felt Nil tense behind her, waiting for her instructions. After a few short breaths, she tapped on her focus and relief flooded her body. Rather than some sort of transmission, Aloy was picking up a landmark signal.  
  
She laughed excitedly, trying to purge some of the adrenaline from her system. It wasn’t a message from Sylens, it was directions for her to follow. Hopefully, a path to the gatekeeper Mucko spoke of.  
  
“Woah!” Nil exclaimed, clutching onto Aloy’s hips as she turned the seeder they were riding off the beaten path near the shore and into the direction of dense woodlands northeast. He peered over her shoulder questioningly and she smiled back at him, all teeth.  
  
“I found something,” she beamed, pushing the seeder on harder.   
  
“A good something?” Nil confirmed, leaning back away from her as he adjusted to her pace.  
  
“Something exciting,” Aloy answered, her eyes fixated on the pulsating purple marker ahead of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday! Hope you guys appreciate the fun beach episode and aren’t too tired of dialogue yet. I promise next chapter will have some action, which may or may not be good for our two beach birds…
> 
> Also, what’s your opinion on the log about the forbidden west? I have a big feeling that the next game will probably take place there *crosses fingers for E3 HZD2 announcement* and that was my inspiration for taking a jab at speculating what such a place would be like! My plan is to make some parts of the Carja traveler’s tales far-fetched, and others… well, you’ll just have to see!
> 
> Again, thanks so much for reading and for the kudos, I’m so happy people have liked my first fic! I keep doing my best to edit back and improve the writing/clarity, but if you see something funky definitely let me know! As always, hit me up on my tumblr, problematic-cinnamon-roll , and talk to me about my ships/writing/fandom stuff or whatever! Have a great weekend!


	5. The Gatekeeper and Her Guard (Nil)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nil and Aloy conquer the gatekeeper Mucko and her companiosn spoke of, but have some trouble with her fearsome guard. Aloy becomes injured in the fight and the tension building between them comes to a head.  
> This chapter told from Nil's Perspective. Read Chapter 6 for Aloy's perspective.

Nil bit back a yawn in the face of Aloy’s unbridled excitement. There was no signal in the world he’d ever heard of that led to bandits, and as such he was appropriately uninterested. They’d been riding at a breakneck pace for about a half hour at this point, and his hips were starting to grind uncomfortably against the metal of the machines main chamber.  
  
“Are we there yet?” Nil groaned behind Aloy, bored of seeing the same scenery pass them by. There went a tree, and then another tree, and another.  
  
To his surprise, Aloy nodded curtly and slowed the seeder down until it stopped just shy of a thin stream. She dismounted, cutting her eyes and searching off into the treeline. Nil recognized the faraway look in her eyes as an indication that she was using that device on her head, intent on finding something he couldn’t see.  That was fine, as far as Nil was concerned, as long as he could take a break from riding and stretch his sore legs out.  
  
Aloy gasped and she took off in a sprint into the underbrush. Nil groaned, and the seeder next to him let out a hiss of compressed air that somehow felt like a sigh of sympathy. Maybe he was just hanging around Aloy too much, thinking that machines had emotions or thoughts. That was too Banuk for his taste, and he lifted their packs off the seeder’s back before hurrying off in the direction that the huntress had disappeared in.  
  
As he followed her path, he noted with interest that she wasn’t making any attempt to be stealthy; broken branches and crushed leaves told him exactly where she’d gone, evidently in a hurry. Whatever she had found had obviously perked her interest to a point of carelessness, which Nil regarded with a mix of disdain and anxiety. Normally, Aloy impressed him with her ability to skillfully hunt her prey without a sound, often killing before anyone knew she was there. She was completely silent and fearfully deadly. Nil preferred a bit of a struggle; people didn’t get _that look_ in their eyes if you took them down with a surprise. He respected Aloy’s method though, it was certainly efficient, and he had to respect when someone could master the skill of death as well as she did.  
  
He was broken from his train of thought as her trail abruptly ended in an open field, turning Nil’s stomach instantly. He dropped to a crouch and slithered back into the cover of the trees, scanning the grass ahead of him to search for anything unusual. He didn’t bother looking for Aloy. He knew he wouldn’t find her anyway, and chances were he wouldn’t need to wait long.  
  
As if on cue, an unfathomably loud crack resounded in the air on the western side of the clearing and a mere heartbeat later Aloy burst from the cover of the trees, only visible for a moment before she slid into a long patch of grass to the north of Nil, easily a hundred yards away. She didn’t acknowledge him, and after a moment the sway in the grass receded, hiding her from him completely. Nil’s blood pumped harder in his ears as he turned his attention to the western side of the clearing where Aloy had sprinted from, and his heart dropped into his stomach.  
  
An enormous machine crested the edge of the clearing, crushing a fully grown tree like a twig under it’s enormous metallic forelimbs. _‘Of course. Why is it always machines with this woman?’_ The ground shook beneath Nil’s feet, and he cut his eyes in concentration. Footsteps, by the way the vibrations cut through the earth under his feet. The metal beast at the end of the clearing stood still, obviously scanning for Aloy, so that meant there had to be at least two more in close proximity. Great. Nil inhaled slowly, trying to quiet the blood rush in his ears, and reached for his bow. Voice of Our Teeth wasn’t equipped to tackle metal beasts as well as Aloy seemed to have outfitted her arsenal of weapons, but as he nocked a hard point arrow he felt no trepidation at the battle ahead. Likelier than not, Aloy could handle this machine on her own, but only a fool would deny themselves the pleasure of fighting alongside her.  
  
Nil’s eyes cut against the sunlight glinting off the body of the beast as he tried to gauge whether it held any weak points. Cannons, sensors and other jutting objects off machines bodies’ were normally good starting places, Aloy had explained to him once. This particular machine appeared to have a radar and a set of streamlined cannons along the edge of its pointed face. It resembled a sawtooth in size but was much less bulky and appeared to be built more efficiently for movement and tracking, like some of the smaller machines. The result seemed to be an amalgam of the cat-like beast and a scrapper, with two sets of heavy forelimbs and a deadly set of crushing jaws.  
  
Deciding an extra impact may be necessary, Nil added two more arrows to his bowstring and aimed at the radar module at the crest of the machine’s shoulders. The piece was whirring diligently as the metal beast swung its yellow eyes back and forth across the clearing. Upon impact a deafening screech erupted from the brute’s maw, and its massive head swung to face Nil, eyes shifting to a bloody red. His heartbeat picked up its pace and his muscles tensed in anticipation of movement, but after taking several thunderous steps in his direction an explosion detonated from below the machine’s front forelimbs, instantly throwing the machine off its footing.  
  
Nil could now see the telltale silver lines whipping in the sunlight, and his face split in a wide smile as he reveled in Aloy’s craftiness. She always anticipated everything; a complete master of her craft. Much to his pleasure, she seemed to also know him well enough to gauge how he would efficiently slot into her plans, even without talking to him. He loved that about her.  
  
Wrinkling his nose, Nil’s brain backpedaled. _He what?_  
  
A flash of red crested from the brush at the end of the clearing as Aloy burst from her hiding place, effectively drawing his attention back to the matter at hand. She had equipped herself with her ropecaster and was slinging rope after rope over the top of the beast’s back, securing it in a moment of surprise. The machine struggled briefly, its menacing metal teeth whirring in a high pitched snarl against the restraints before toppling over into the earth.  
  
Nil was halfway through the clearing before his mind fully recognized the automatic motion of jumping into battle. He sprinted in the direction of the huntress, rapid firing arrows into the exposed parts of the metalwork where the ropes tore chunks of armor off the body of the machine. Aloy as well had switched to her bow, a cascade of arrows flying from her tautly pulled string. Her precise, fluid movements never ceased to captivate Nil, and he had to remind himself to focus on the danger ahead of him rather than stopping to watch her. If asked, he would swear that she moved in slow motion at points, her movements too methodical to be humanely possible in such quick successions.  
  
Aloy’s voice rang out along the clearing to Nil. “Get down!” She rolled, coming up with three flaming arrows at her bowstring. Nil watched her pull her leading arm straight as he ducked down to the earth away from the beast, and a wave of heat rolled over his shoulders before he jumped back to his feet. The machine’s hind quarter was ablaze, busted blaze canisters dropping out lava-like sludge from their shattered remains. Nil had lost sight of Aloy in his seconds of downtime, and realized a moment too late he should have stayed under cover as a snap of rope flayed off the machine, freeing it to stampede in his direction.  
  
Blood pumped so hard in Nil’s ears he could scarcely hear the machine’s warning call as he armed his bow once more, the arrowpoint shooting from his grasp and slicing into the left lens of the brute’s face, causing it to reel back away from him. Briefly, he heard an echo of the huntress’s voice in the back of his mind, scolding him for damaging such a valuable part. A feral laugh ripped from his throat and he dashed forwards, raking his knife across the exposed tubing along the machine’s neck where Aloy had torn off heavy metal plating. Greeting his recklessness, the machine whipped its head around to smash into Nil’s torso, sending him flying into the brush at the side of the clearing.  
  
When the ringing in his ears cleared, he became aware of Aloy’s voice first, an enraged battle cry ringing out over the clearing. He watched her corral the machine back into a trap and deftly slice into the main chamber, sending a cascade of electrical sparks up around her. Again, time seemed to slow as she slammed the end of her spear in and out of the metal hull, her hair whipping back around her sweat slicked face, a dark droplet of blood shining in the sun as it burst from an elongated cut in her face.  
  
The contrast of this captivating spectacle to the rapid series of events that occurred next was staggering. Two more of the machines burst from the treeline to the west, and following behind them at an unhurried pace was a massive tallneck. Aloy wasted no time, whipping forward off the carcass of the destroyed machine and sprinted towards where Nil crouched, finally back on his feet. Nil didn’t need to make out her voice over the deafening descent of the machines, he sprang forward and followed her as she fled into the forest ahead of the Tallneck. This was a retreat.  
  
Their flight was exhilarating, ducking in and between fallen trees, rocks and uneven terrain within the forest. Aloy took a sharp left ahead of him, and Nil scrabbled behind her as she leapt onto a rockface which jutted out within the path cut into the forest by the tallneck’s meticulous route. His mind swirled with confusion at her strange choice of evasive maneuvers, but he followed her nonetheless.  
  
When they crested the top of the stone, Aloy crouched in anticipation, her wild hazel eyes seeking Nil’s face over her shoulder. The left side of her face was crusted with blood from a gash against her forehead, and Nil’s heart stuttered as he watched her lips move, mesmerized.  
  
She was beautiful.  
  
The thought struck him simultaneously as Aloy jabbed her fist into his shoulder, her head whipping around to lock onto the movement of the tallneck’s large feet as it creeped ever closer to them. She was saying something again, and Nil focused harder on what she was trying to say.  
  
“As soon as I move up I need you to jump, okay?”  
  
Nil gave her a curt nod. He wasn’t entirely sure what she was referring to but his gut told him that when she moved, he would be ready to follow her. Her body twisted and she fired two arrows into the machines when they emerged behind the tallneck’s feet, radar module’s spinning atop their heads. Nil followed suit and joined Aloy, landing a particularly good shot along the face of one of the machines which toppled it into the earth below them.  
  
Movement drew his attention away from the especially satisfying shot as he caught Aloy out of the side of his eye launch herself off the stone and grapple onto the tallneck’s shoulder spine. Nil haphazardly shot one last arrow which, miraculously, glanced off the side of one of the machine’s faces to momentarily distract it and moved to jump behind her. He watched nervously as she steadied herself against the shifting movement of the tallneck and released a relieved sigh simultaneously as a bolt from one of the machines shot through the air and scorched a hot mark across her shoulder, jolting her forward.  
  
She was going to fall.  
  
Without hesitation, Nil shot through the air towards the Tallneck, his hands slipping against the hot metal as he scrambled for purchase and his legs dangled uselessly beneath him, easily fifty feet from the ground.  
  
Snarling tenaciously, Nil swung his body up and over the edge of the spine and threw his arm out to catch Aloy as she slipped precariously over the edge. Her face was twisted in pain and her left arm hung limply at her side, but she gripped fiercely onto Nil with her right as he pulled her up and onto the Tallneck spine next to him. Thankfully, the machine rounded a tight ravine and the two lighter monstrosities were forced to double back around to catch up, which put them out of sight as Nil looked anxiously over Aloy.  
  
She hissed as he ran his hands over the edge of her shoulder, the metal along her upper arm singed down to where flesh rubbed hotly against the fractured armor. Working quickly, he disconnected the sharp piece from the rest of her armor and it clattered down uselessly to the ground below. He felt dizzy from the adrenaline pumping through his veins, no longer enjoyable but rather sickening. Nil pushed down the sharp pain in his chest as his mind replayed the event, reminding him of the potential consequences if he hadn’t caught her in time. If he wasn’t there to catch her in the future.  
  
“It’s dislocated,” she managed, gritting her teeth and shifting her shoulder closer to face Nil. “I don’t know how much time we’ve got before those other two catch up with us. We need to get to the top of this tallneck where they can’t reach us.”  
  
Nil frowned, cutting his eyes at her. “You want to climb this thing with one arm?” His brain was shouting at him to tell her no, but he pushed the feeling down, focusing on keeping her shoulder steady.  
  
Aloy shook her head, wincing as the muscles in her neck connected with her shoulder. “Not really, but I’m useless like this. You need to try to pop my shoulder back into place so I at least have a fighting chance.”  
  
Examining her shoulder, he realized she was right. She groaned as a muscle spasm rocked over the stressed flesh around her joint, and Nil struggled to remember his minimal knowledge of healing arts. He’d seen it done at least once before, and Aloy sat up straight next to him, obviously familiar with the procedure. He bit back an inappropriate smile at the movement; of course she would be familiar with dislocating her shoulder.  
  
“This is going to hurt,” he warned as he placed on hand on her shoulder and the other at her upper arm, pausing for a moment. She rolled her eyes at his comment.  
  
“Hurry up!” Aloy howled, biting into her lip until Nil saw blood as he applied pressure to her shoulder blade, attempting to rotate the joint and coax the bone back into place. The tallneck placed a heavy step below them, bumping Nil forward slightly and he heard a sickening pop.  Aloy gasped, the indent of her teeth a bloody red on her lower jaw.  
  
Nil licked his lips subconsciously again, watching a dark red trail reach down from the bitemark on her lower lip. “Did it work?” He leaned over Aloy, massaging the flesh over her shoulder.  
  
Aloy nodded, letting out a slow shuddering breath and opening her eyes. Despite the pain, her gaze was sharp as she locked eyes with Nil. “We have to start climbing.”  
  
“No. Hold still,” Nil told her, keeping his arm across her back. He unraveled the red scarf around his neck and tied it over her neck, fastening a tight knot at the end to secure her arm close to her body. “You shouldn’t move it. What do you need?”  
  
Aloy scowled, looking up at the head of the machine. “I need to get to the top Nil, we’re wasting time down here.”  
  
Nil nodded examining the neck of the beast for a moment. His instincts told him to get his huntress off the machine before she fell to her death, but he knew going against her wishes would be unpleasant at best. He rifled through his shoulder pack and let out a sigh of relief.  
  
“Alright,” he grumbled, placing his hands lightly over Aloy’s shoulders. “I’m going to climb to the top and drop you a rope. Don’t climb anything. I’ll pull you up.”  
  
Aloy’s look was thunderous, angry at being towed around probably, and the adrenaline from the fight and her injury was likely making her combative. But the gentle pressure of Nil’s hands on her shoulder seemed to calm her somewhat, and she took a steadying breath before nodding.  
  
“Be careful,” she said simply.  
  
Once the pattern of the handholds became obvious, the climb was relatively easy, and Nil secured the rope to a fastening on the side of the head before dropping it to Aloy. She regarded it with the affection one might give to a snake, but grappled on with a firm handhold and tangled her legs before nodding up to Nil.  
  
She was lighter than he thought she would be, and though the pull was by no means easy, he was helping her up over the head no more than a minute later. Just in time, as the frustrated cries of the machines down below returned. They both laid back against the warm metal for a moment, catching their breath before Aloy let out a low, humorless laugh.  
  
“I guess we’re even now,” she lamented, her face turned to the sky.  
  
Nil turned his head to look at her, her face relaxed despite the sling over her shoulder and the crusted blood against her forehead and lips. She was pensive, but her eyes had a sad quality to them.  
  
“I don’t understand,” he admitted.  
  
Aloy made a move to shrug and groaned against a spasm in her shoulder. “Ah, I got reckless down there. Not sure how easily I would’ve made it out without you,” she admitted, smirking. “I mean, I probably would’ve been fine, but setting a popped shoulder is hard without another person.”  
  
Nil’s stomach churned uncomfortably, following her train of thought. He didn’t like it. “We’re even,” he repeated, “for one death.”  
  
Aloy turned, looking at him now. She said nothing so he continued. “You’ve saved my life more than once, Aloy. This is unequivocal to the debt I owe you,” he explained, sitting up so he could look at her more directly. “And even if I saved your life a hundred times more, I still would not feel our exchange complete. This doesn’t change anything.”  
  
The statement seemed to offend her somehow and Aloy looked up at him uncomfortably, worrying at the cut on her lip. “Nil… I don’t want you here because you feel like you’re… indebted to me,” she said, scowling at the last few words. “That’s why I left Meridian. I thought…” She stumbled, her face in a deep frown now. Nil squirmed under her gaze. “I thought we were partners?”  
  
“Partners,” Nil repeated, testing the word around on his tongue. “I don’t find that to be accurate,” he admitted, and her face turned into a dark scowl.  
  
“What then, Nil? You show up at my doorstep in the middle of nowhere nearly dead, lead me to a group of bandits to kill and then refuse to stop following me,” she rambled, aggressively gesturing with her hands. “What are you doing here?” She asked, repeating the question from several days past, her face full of emotion.  
  
Nil felt stormy, his stomach churning. It was a question he hadn’t fully answered for himself, and he realized with some hesitation that perhaps that was the reason he had been so evasive with her up until now. She was the one who was injured, and yet still here he felt trapped, the old wound in his ribs throbbing painfully.  
  
He desperately wanted to evade her questions. To derail the conversation, or flee from her.  
  
“Because you bring life to me,” he admitted instead, the confession sending a wave of shock across Aloy’s face. “When I first met you, I thought you a kindred spirit to myself. These hands,” he gestured, raising his palms to her, “are meant to take life, effective and precise. Once you kill enough, that’s what you become. A tool of death.”  
  
Aloy opened her mouth and quickly closed it when Nil gestured for her patience. His brows were furrowed, mind working slowly as he found a way to express the unfamiliar thoughts. “You showed me that death is… Incomplete without a counterbalance of life. The two are not mutually exclusive.” Nil shook his head, feeling all at once that he was jumping to a place that he could not return from.  
  
“I thought you were the one who would give me the death I deserved, a fair price for living even briefly in your light. You denied me such a right, and the shadow of that has lived with me since. It’s why I sought you out again before the battle, before they _recruited_ me again to fight some war,” he gritted his teeth, spitting out the words like foul meat. He took a long breath before continuing again. “I was a coward. I traveled into the west after the battle to fight and kill as long as I could.”  
  
A small chuckle escaped his throat, humorless. “The circumstances of our reunion were far less confusing to me than the surprise of waking up, realizing you had spared me from death again, after I tried so hard to die,” he continued, his eyes fixed off on some distant object in the horizon. “To reduce this to a simple matter of a debt owed is a gross oversimplification, one which I regret not realizing sooner.”  
  
Nil shook his head, looking at her in the eyes again. “This is foreign to me, Aloy. I am a man of few words and many sharp actions. Whether you intended it or not, the hard edge of your life has split my chest and I will bleed endlessly until I am no more.”  
  
He set his face and squared his shoulders, preparing himself for whatever came next. “Would you spare a dying man his wish to learn the face of his killer?”  
  
Aloy seemed to grapple with herself a few moments, opening and closing her mouth several times before sputtering at Nil disbelievingly. “Are you confessing to me right now? Is this really what’s happening? I almost just died, Nil!” She cupped a hand to her face, groaning. “I can’t believe this is happening right now.”  
  
Nil blinked, confusion sweeping over him. Wasn’t he being obvious? He was telling her this _because_ she had almost just died. “Do you want me to leave?” He asked bluntly, fixed on her face even as she avoided his gaze.  
  
Her cheekbones were swept with color, but she ceased her theatrics a moment to carefully examine his face. “…No, I mean, of course not Nil, I just…” she started, gesturing her hands in front of her as much as she could. “Of all the crazy things you’ve said to me this is the most startling.”  
  
Trying and failing to feel insulted, Nil shuffled next to her, running a finger cautiously over her cheekbone. She was flushed, partially from the unusual nature of the situation and also probably from her injury. Still, he couldn’t help the hard point of affection in his chest as she lay on her back beside him, her hair whipping ever so slightly from the wind coursing over the head of the tallneck. A wave of relief washed over him, delayed by the extreme circumstances following their battle with the machines surrounding the tallneck. She was safe, for now, and he was with her. This was enough.  
  
“I’m not going to send you away or something, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Aloy said finally, wincing as she shuffled to a sitting position. “I… don’t know how to respond yet, or even really what I’m responding to, but I value you as a partner, Nil.”  
  
He watched her as she approached the center of the disc, taking her spear from her back and jabbing it into the center module of the machine’s skull. “Sure you tried to fight me to the death and you can be a bit of a pain in the ass, but who else would follow me to the end of the earth like you have?” She fiddled with some kind of module, gesturing oddly in the air before a rattling emerged from beneath Nil’s feet and coils of neutral blue wiring spread out from the core Aloy was focused on. She examined something carefully, her hand instinctively reaching for her focus and then her face broke out in a wild smile.  
  
“I know where we need to go,” she announced, staring at him intently. “I… Are you coming with me?”  
  
The tension in Nil’s chest released and he resisted the urge to reach for her. _‘Anywhere’,_ he thought to himself, his skin burning in the heat of her fiery hair. “Of course,” he replied with a curt nod. “But first, lets pick those machines off where they can’t reach us.”  
  
Aloy’s face broke into a smile and she laughed at him, flushed with pleasure as the tension broke around them. “Isn’t that a bit unsportsmanlike?” She teased, casting her gaze over the edge of the tallneck in an attempt to spot the deadly pursuers.  
  
“Maybe,” Nil admitted with a shrug. “But sportsmanship is for people. Machines don’t know the difference.” This gained him a punch against the shoulder and Nil smiled, savoring the brief pain of Aloy’s knuckles against his skin, her smile sharp and the pain in his chest sharper. He prayed to whatever gods were listening that he never healed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aah, feelings. I hope you guys enjoyed this Nil-only chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it! Feelings are out in the open now, which opens us up to new possibilities...
> 
> I'm releasing this chapter the same time as chapter 6 since they're essentially the same chunk of action, just different perspectives. Let me know which one you liked more! Trying to cast the same events in different lights for these two was definitely an interesting task, but I enjoyed it a lot.


	6. The Gatekeeper and Her Guard (Aloy)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nil and Aloy conquer the gatekeeper Mucko and her companiosn spoke of, but have some trouble with her fearsome guard. Aloy becomes injured in the fight and the tension building between them comes to a head.  
> This chapter told from Aloy's Perspective. Read Chapter 5 for Nil's perspective.

Aloy’s heart pumped hard in her chest as the signal strength grew stronger in her ear, the purple dot less than a mile away now. It was probably either a cauldron or a tallneck, which was exciting in and of itself, but the signal could also be leading her to some location she’d never seen before. A signal from a GAIA relic, maybe? Or some other artificial intelligence, like the one in the Cut?  
  
Nil shifted once more behind Aloy, shifting his hips restlessly behind her. She knew he was probably getting tired from the ride, but they were so close…  
  
“Are we there yet?” He groaned behind her, and she bit back a smile. Predictable as he was, she couldn’t help the flush of affection in her chest. She had enjoyed his companionship over the past few days; despite not having any real reason to stay with her, he had agreed without hesitation to accompany her on her quest for answers. He listened with patient interest and kept his complaints mostly to himself.  
  
She opened her mouth to reply when the focus chimed harder in her ear, expanding the tracking dot to deliver a small informational box _. ‘It’s a Tallneck!’_ Aloy practically vibrated with excitement, and she nodded to Nil behind her, pulling the seeder to a stop and dismounting. No sense bringing an unfamiliar machine up to something like a tallneck if it wasn’t guaranteed that things wouldn’t go sour. She stood still a moment, attempting to lock onto the signal while she felt the ground for the telltale vibrations.  
  
As soon as the focus confirmed the lock on the signal, Aloy began her mad dash to the area. Nil would follow her if he wanted to, but she guessed he wouldn’t be terribly excited about climbing up an enormous machine while it moved. That was fine, as far as she was concerned she could handle the situation. The trees grew thick around her, and she anxiously tore through them in search of the worn-down path the tallneck would have carved into the earth beneath its feet. Abruptly, the trees broke into a wide, expansive clearing. The shape was too irregular, and Aloy moved forward more cautiously towards where the focus led her, feeling warier now that she was exposed. She clicked on her focus, scanning the area.  
  
The tallneck was circling a small hill which held a dilapidated ruin of the Old Ones’; nothing unusual about that. But Aloy did note with some interest that there also appeared to be a regularly worn path of smaller footsteps around the perimeter where the tallneck patrolled. Smaller machines, by the looks of it, guarding the area around the signal point. She would probably need to take care of them before she could safely climb the tallneck.  
  
Fighting something unfamiliar was always easier when she had space to work, and so Aloy set several tripwires and detonators throughout the field before sprinting off in the direction of the signal point. The brutes weren’t hard to find, following in a small pack in the shadow of the tallneck and a quick scan revealed the new faces to be ‘watchdog’ units. Aloy wrinkled her nose at the unusual name; what was a _dog_? She resigned herself to investigate further later and slung several electric bombs at their mechanical forelimbs before springing forward and tying down two securely to the earth.  
  
The last, she decided, would be an interesting kill. Taking a wide swing against the watchdog’s side, she goaded the machine into aggression and took off in a run towards the clearing. She was careful not to be too hurried, otherwise the machine might lose her in the dense underbrush. She broke the tree line in less than a minute and skid into a patch of tall grass, her heart hammering with the thrill of the run. The watchdog followed shortly behind her, crashing into view and halting to scan for her. She was fairly certain she was out of range and prepared to launch a rock to bait the machine into her traps when a burst of arrows shot out from the forest to her left.  
  
She smiled to herself as the machine recoiled from the impact against it’s weak radar module, letting out a deafening screech and turning to face Nil. Aloy was reminded of how much she enjoyed having him to watch her back, and her grin turned wicked as the machine charged directly at him and into her line of tripwires. Seeing her cue, Aloy darted out from her cover and re-equipped her ropecaster to immobilize the machine like she’d done with its two companions. It snarled ineffectively before toppling into the earth and Aloy caught sight of Nil as he too jumped into the fray, bow armed and firing at a rapid pace.  
  
Aloy felt like laughing, her blood coursing hard in her veins and her chest bursting with the exhilaration of battle. Nil fell into formation perfectly next to her, targeting the machine’s weak points as she systematically ripped the protective armor from it’s layered hull. The blaze canisters at the back of the watchdog’s back legs began to crackle and Aloy switched tactics, shooting one last set of hard point arrows before changing her strategy. She shouted a warning to Nil and rolled out of the way of the machine’s blasters before coming up with a set of three fire arrows. She squinted her eyes against the sun, letting her breath roll slowly out of her chest and the arrows flew from her grasp igniting the canisters in an eruption of fire.  
  
The fire ripped through the ropes and they snapped wildly around the machine as it rose from its couching position, hind quarter ablaze and sparks flying out from the damaged joints. Settling on a target it let out a grinding roar and moved towards Nil menacingly, canons lighting up with hot energy. An arrow lodged itself deep into one of the red lenses on the head of the machine, causing it to reel back and fire the shots uselessly into the air. Aloy tensed as the shots curled up into the clear air; this would be the perfect beacon for the other two machines. They needed to pick up the pace.  
  
Nil’s feral laugh rang out across the clearing and Aloy looked back to see him charging recklessly towards the watchdog, his knife trailing down the exposed wires of the machines neck, a cascade of sparks flying up behind him. It would be a picturesque moment if not for the carelessness of it, and Aloy called out a moment too late as the brute swung its massive head directly into Nil’s body, flinging him like a ragdoll into the grass several yards away. She gritted her teeth, sprinting forward around the machine to drop blast traps at its feet. The machine wavered uncertainly as she danced around its feet, luring it into stepping back repeatedly into explosions of fire and electricity. One of the watchdog’s front four limbs cracked and hung limply at its side.  
  
Her spear tip arched into the weak joint and the machine toppled over, losing its footing against the constant barrage. Aloy leaped forward and thrust her spear into the main core of the machine, twisting and slicing as she crushed the mechanisms within. The watchdog gave one last mechanical whine as its processors attempted to deal with the terminal damage, and then stilled beneath her. She was vaguely aware of a stinging against her temple as blood dripped over her eye _. ‘Great’,_ she thought to herself, Rosts’s voice echoing in her mind. There wasn’t much worse than an injury which affected your sight, especially when depth perception was also appropriated compromised. Worse yet, the two other watchdogs finally burst from the opposite tree line, eyes switching quickly from yellow to red. Aloy turned quickly, spotting Nil rising shakily from the grass behind her; his red feathered headdress was cracked on one side, and the hazy look of comprehension set a familiar pit of anxiety in her gut. He probably had a concussion, and she realized with growing apprehension that this wasn’t a battle they could win.  
  
Aloy moved swiftly to Nil, urging him to his feet and racing off into the cover of the forest adjacent to the clearing. The tallneck was in view now, and if her luck was any good, she knew that ahead of them would be a launchpad she could use to ascend the machine. Careful to check that Nil was still following her, she tore through the bushes, maneuvering with some recklessness over fallen trees and craggy obstacles. Her heart raced as she finally spotted what she was looking for; a tall boulder stood out against the forest floor and she leapt forward without hesitation.  
  
“We can’t fight those things in this condition. We’re going to have to just hold them off until the tallneck gets close enough so we can jump”, she instructed to Nil over her shoulder. His eyes were locked on her, but they had a faraway look that made Aloy uneasy. She jabbed her fist into his shoulder, hoping to knock him into focus. “As soon as I move up I need you to jump, okay?”  
  
He nodded at her and although she wasn’t fully convinced he understood, she didn’t have any further time to instruct him as the two remaining watchdogs broke cover and trained their heads on her and Nil. Her fingers worked as fast as they could, throwing accuracy to the wind with a hope to keep the beasts occupied long enough for the tallneck to step within range. Nil joined her, his arrows flying somewhat sloppier than usual but still hitting their marks efficiently enough to give Aloy a moment of cover to jump.  
  
She slung her bow over her shoulder and sprang off the boulder, hands clamping on to the familiar surface. Aloy pulled one leg over the edge of the spine and heard the discharge of a canon behind her. She was vaguely aware of a stinging sensation against her shoulder before she was pushed forward over the back edge of the spine. Her brain reeled with confusion as only one of her arms shot forward through the air to counter her forward motion, scrabbling desperately against the hot metal. Her palms were sweaty with exhaustion and spent adrenaline, and she realized with some resignation that she was going to fall.  
  
Only she didn’t. Nil’s hand fastened securely around her forearm and he snarled with exertion as he pulled her back over the edge. Her body landed heavily on the metal next to him and her brain finally recognized the signal of pain her shoulder. It was familiar, and she shuddered unhappily as Nil removed the shattered armor piece over the wound and ran his hands along her exposed flesh. His hands felt hot against her skin, and she cursed her bad luck.  
  
“It’s dislocated,” she managed, gritting her teeth and shifting her shoulder closer to face Nil. “I don’t know how much time we’ve got before those other two catch up with us. We need to get to the top of this tallneck where they can’t reach us.”  
  
Nil frowned, cutting his eyes at her. “You want to climb this thing with one arm?” The look on his face said that he didn’t think that was a very good idea, but he knew better than to say otherwise and focused instead on keeping her shoulder steady.  
  
Aloy shook her head, wincing as the muscles in her neck connected with her shoulder. “Not really, but I’m useless like this. You need to try to pop my shoulder back into place so I at least have a fighting chance.”  
  
Examining her shoulder, he seemed to realize that she was right, and nodded his head. She groaned as a muscle spasm rocked over the stressed flesh around her joint and attempted to sit up straighter to make the procedure easier for him. He hesitated a moment, searching her face.  
  
“This is going to hurt,” he warned as he placed on hand on her shoulder and the other at her upper arm, pausing for a moment. She rolled her eyes at his comment.  
  
“Hurry up!” Aloy howled, biting into her lip until she drew blood as he applied pressure to her shoulder blade, attempting to rotate the joint and coax the bone back into place. The tallneck placed a heavy step below them, bumping Nil forward slightly and she heard a sickening pop.  Aloy gasped, the indent of her teeth a bloody red on her lower jaw. It was excruciatingly painful until a wave of relief passed over her fatigued muscles.  
  
“Did it work?” He leaned over Aloy, massaging the flesh over her shoulder. She bit back a moan as his fingers worked the sore muscles into submission.  
  
Aloy nodded, letting out a slow shuddering breath and opening her eyes. Despite the pain, she tried to make sure her gaze was sharp as she locked eyes with Nil. “We have to start climbing.”  
  
“No. Hold still,” Nil told her, keeping his arm across her back. She bristled slightly, but relaxed as he unraveled the red scarf around his neck and tied it over her neck, fastening a tight knot at the end to secure her arm close to her body. “You shouldn’t move it. What do you need?”  
  
Aloy scowled, looking up at the head of the machine. Why was he being so difficult with her? “I need to get to the top Nil, we’re wasting time down here.”  
  
Nil nodded examining the neck of the beast for a moment. His eyes flashed thoughtfully, and he turned to rifle through his shoulder pack, scowling as he searched intently for some object. A vein throbbed a hard line against the sweat slicked flesh of his neck. Aloy shifted restlessly, wishing he would stop whatever he was doing and use his hands to massage her shoulder again. Her mind was tight with pain.  
  
“Alright,” he grumbled, placing his hands lightly over Aloy’s shoulders. “I’m going to climb to the top and drop you a rope. Don’t climb anything. I’ll pull you up.”  
  
Bristling immediately, Aloy readied a hot retort but restrained herself, trying to remember that Nil was only here to help her. Sensing her combative response, Nil reached forward and placed his hands gently on her shoulder. Against her better nature, Aloy was calmed immediately and she took a steadying breath before nodding.  
  
“Be careful,” she said simply, wishing she knew how to express her gratitude.  
  
Nil seemed to get the hang of the climb quickly, and he dropped the rope down to her shortly after disappearing over the edge of the head. Aloy scowled hotly at the end, feeling like dead weight being shuffled around, but fastened herself as best she could anyway. She nodded up at Nil and he began to lift her towards the head of the machine, faster than she thought he would. She scanned the horizon below them carefully, breathing a sigh of relief as she reached Nil at the top no sooner than when the watchdogs below crashed out of the tree line, their yellow eyes raking across the tallneck’s lower spines.  
  
Their frustrated cries fell on deaf ears as Aloy released a shuddering breath and laid herself back against the warm metal of the disc, the sway of the tallneck’s walk relaxing her. Nil followed suit next to her, pulling up the rope and laying next to her to stare at the sky. His arm was a hair’s breadth away from hers and she could feel the heat radiating off him as he slowed his breath.  
  
The sky above them was nearly clear, warm sunlight hitting her face unfiltered and crackling the dried blood against her face. ‘God I must look like shit,’ she thought to herself, wincing against an unwanted smile. Perhaps when they set up camp later that night Nil would be kind enough to help her patch up the messy patch of skin over her eye which, only now, seemed to have stopped bleeding.  
  
Abruptly, Aloy’s heart skipped a beat as the full array of events from the last few moments played in her mind. Nil had saved her life. He had risked himself to catch her from her deadly fall and had lifted her dead weight up to safety at the top of the tallneck’s head. Her eyes grew hot and her belly filled with shameful anger at the unfairness of it. The emotion released in a short humorless laugh and she took a steadying breath to regain her composure before speaking.  
  
“I guess we’re even now,” she lamented, her face turned to the sky.  
  
Nil turned his head to look at her, his face inquisitive at first. When she didn’t continue, his expression turned into a deep frown.  
  
“I don’t understand,” he admitted.  
  
Aloy made a move to shrug and groaned against a spasm in her shoulder. “Ah, I got reckless down there. Not sure how easily I would’ve made it out without you,” she admitted, smirking. “I mean, I probably would’ve been fine, but setting a popped shoulder is hard without another person.”  
  
She recounted the time she’d gotten a particularly hard shot from a ravager and had to pop her own shoulder back into place against the bark of a tree. It had been painful, but she had managed as she always did. The thought of such a thing now seemed unnecessarily difficult, and she cursed herself silently for growing soft in Nil’s presence. She could take care of herself, she didn’t need anyone to help her. Yet the thought of Nil leaving her now opened a painful pit in her stomach.  
  
He scowled at her for a moment before replying. “We’re even,” he repeated, “for one death.”  
  
Aloy turned, looking at him now. _‘What is that supposed to mean?’_ Not knowing what to say, she waited for him to continue. “You’ve saved my life more than once, Aloy. This is unequivocal to the debt I owe you,” he explained, sitting up so he could look at her more directly. His eyes were serious, and her stomach churned uncomfortably. “And even if I saved your life a hundred times more, I still would not feel our exchange complete. This doesn’t change anything.”  
  
Anger and sorrow mingled into an uncomfortable pressure in her chest and Aloy shifted uncomfortably, gnawing at the cut on her lip. Was that what this was to Nil? Did she somehow misread his intention, and he too only followed her because he saw her as some mythic savior? “Nil… I don’t want you here because you feel like you’re… indebted to me,” she said, scowling at the last few words. “That’s why I left Meridian. I thought…” She stumbled, her face in a deep frown now. Nil seemed to squirm under her gaze. “I thought we were partners?” She finished finally, her voice betraying more sorrow than she intended.  
  
“Partners,” Nil repeated, testing the word around on his tongue. “I don’t find that to be accurate,” he admitted, his face plain in its dissent.  
  
Anger won out against the sorrow and Aloy spat back at him. “What then, Nil? You show up at my doorstep in the middle of nowhere nearly dead, lead me to a group of bandits to kill and then refuse to stop following me,” she rambled, aggressively gesturing with her hands. “What are you doing here?” She asked, repeating the question from several days past, which he had carefully evaded answering for her.  
  
She felt like yelling, or pushing Nil, and she briefly considered just telling him to leave. She didn’t need this right now. Aloy had intentionally left Meridian to get away from situations like this; people she thought ere her friends showing her plainly that they didn’t care for anything other than what she could do for them. She felt foolish for sharing as much of herself as she had, and bit back another wave of sorrow as she caught Nil’s gaze.  
  
He looked like a cornered animal, for a moment. Aloy imagined for a heartbeat that he might just run, then and there. She wouldn’t be surprised.  
  
“Because you bring life to me,” he admitted instead, the confession sending a wave of shock into her. “When I first met you, I thought you a kindred spirit to myself. These hands,” he gestured, raising his palms to her, “are meant to take life, effective and precise. Once you kill enough, that’s what you become. A tool of death.”  
  
_‘That’s not true!’_ Aloy thought to herself, opening her mouth to argue. Nil held his hand up patiently, and she bit her tongue, forcing herself to let him continue despite her better judgement. His brows were furrowed, as if confronted with some unfamiliar puzzle. “You showed me that death is… Incomplete without a counterbalance of life. The two are not mutually exclusive.” Nil shook his head, reminding Aloy once more that he was probably suffering from a concussion.  
  
She watched carefully as his fingers grazed absent mindedly over the center of his ribs, like someone nursing a wound. Their talk before the battle of hades flashed in her mind; hadn’t he used similar phrasing then? She had shut him down so quickly, indignant at the idea that he would say she had wounded him when she had staunchly refused to fight him. What had he been trying to tell her then…?  
  
“I thought you were the one who would give me the death I deserved, a fair price for living even briefly in your light. You denied me such a right, and the shadow of that has lived with me since. It’s why I sought you out again before the battle, before they _recruited_ me again to fight some war,” he gritted his teeth, spitting out the words like foul meat. He took a long breath before continuing again. “I was a coward. I traveled into the west after the battle to fight and kill as long as I could.”  
  
A small chuckle escaped his throat, humorless. “The circumstances of our reunion were far less confusing to me than the surprise of waking up, realizing you had spared me from death again, after I tried so hard to die,” he continued, his eyes fixed off on some distant object in the horizon. Aloy swallowed hard, realizing what he was choosing to admit to her. “To reduce this to a simple matter of a debt owed is a gross oversimplification, one which I regret not realizing sooner.”  
  
Aloy’s heart was hammering in her chest now, and her entire body felt wound tight in anticipation. The thought that their last night on the rooftops of Meridian could have been their final goodbye sparked a heavy feeling of mourning that she had not experienced since Rosts’s death. Were all goodbyes designed to be so sudden and unceremonious? She resisted the urge to reach out to him, to convince him that he had a purpose in this world, no matter how gruesome, but she resisted. The look in his eyes indicated that he was not yet finished, and so she did her best to be patient.  
  
Nil shook his head, as if to read her mind, and looked her in the eyes again. “This is foreign to me, Aloy. I am a man of few words and many sharp actions. Whether you intended it or not, the hard edge of your life has split my chest and I will bleed endlessly until I am no more.”  
  
He set his face and squared his shoulders, as if preparing for her to attack him. “Would you spare a dying man his wish to learn the face of his killer?”  
  
Aloy reeled, her brain attempting to understand the implications of the sentence. She opened her mouth to admonish him, decided better of it, opened it again to deliver a cutting remark and found herself empty. “Are you confessing to me right now? Is this really what’s happening? I almost just died, Nil!” She cupped a hand to her face, groaning. “I can’t believe this is happening right now.”  
  
Nil blinked, his face unreadable in response to her shocked babbling. “Do you want me to leave?” He asked bluntly, and she could feel his stare grating against her flesh.  
  
_‘No!_ ’ A voice shouted in her head, anxiously fighting back against her. Aloy’s face felt hot and she took a stabilizing breath, turning to examine his face. He seemed… genuine, if not incredibly uneasy. “…No, I mean, of course not Nil, I just…” she started, gesturing her hands forward as she struggled with her inability to express herself as eloquently as he had. “Of all the crazy things you’ve said to me this is the most startling.”  
  
He moved closer to her, reaching his hand up to run a line down and across her face. Aloy felt frozen in the moment, her face feeling even hotter against the callouses of his fingers on her jawline. His silver eyes darted back and forth between her own, searching for something within her gaze as her breath caught in her throat. His hand moved back, finally finishing its movement at the tender flesh under her chin and she swallowed hard against the heavy tension in her throat.  
  
“I’m not going to send you away or something, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Aloy said finally, wincing as she shuffled to a sitting position. “I… don’t know how to respond yet, or even really what I’m responding to, but I value you as a partner, Nil.”  
  
It wasn’t a lie, Aloy told herself. A small voice in the back of her head told her that she wasn’t being honest with herself, but she shoved it down, and moved instead to the tallneck’s center module. “Sure, you tried to fight me to the death and you can be a bit of a pain in the ass, but who else would follow me to the end of the earth like you have?” Biting back a smile, she jabbed her spear into the console and rotated the matrix into place. The neutral blue wires coursed out below her feet and she examined the map intently before her eyes locked onto a northern point along the map.  
  
The ruins of a large city were mapped against the shoreline a few days journey north of them, and against these ruins sat the markings identifying a settlement. Even better, the map had placed an indicator within these ruins that signified a cauldron. Aloy’s heart beat excitedly and she turned back to Nil, a wild smile splayed across her face.  
  
“I know where we need to go,” she announced, staring at him intently. “I… Are you coming with me?”  
  
Aloy felt anxious for a moment as he seemed to grapple with himself for a moment. She nearly thought him about to refuse her before he shifted into a relaxed position. “Of course,” he replied with a curt nod. “But first, let’s pick those machines off where they can’t reach us.”  
  
Aloy’s face broke into a smile and she laughed at him, flushed with pleasure as the tension broke around them. “Isn’t that a bit unsportsmanlike?” She teased, casting her gaze over the edge of the tallneck as she tried to spot their deadly pursuers.  
  
“Maybe,” Nil admitted with a shrug. “But sportsmanship is for people. Machines don’t know the difference.” Aloy punched him in his shoulder in retaliation for his goading remark, and they shared a look momentarily before her face melted into a fond smile. His eyes glinted with humor, crinkled at the edges, and she felt the familiar lump in her throat slink down into her chest, settling heavy with purpose. It filled her chest with heat, blossoming out into her aching shoulder and tired limbs with a comforting warmth.  
  
Comprehension dawned in her mind as Nil cast his gaze over the horizon, and the ache in her chest pulsed harder. In the pressure of her battles and her anxiety of the reconstruction of GAIA, had she failed to notice that he had wounded her as well?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, does anyone know if ARTEMIS decided dogs were a good species to revive? You never see any in HZD, but I can't help but feel like they would be a good species to preserve in a world where humans would be set back to hunting and gathering...  
> Long story short, I spent a lot of time on Horizon message boards while writing this trying to figure out the fate of dogs. It was important to me.
> 
> Also aaaahhhh sorry for those of you who read this as soon as I posted it and got some of my editor's notes tossed in there. The unfinished copy was uploaded in accident, but has been fixed thanks to user 'thelegendofbending' who so kindly pointed it out to me!
> 
> See you all next Friday! I think you'll like our next chapter ;)


	7. Refuge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloy and Nil weather out a storm following a particularly bad injury to Aloy's shoulder. Valuable information is gained from within the old military base they camp within that will shape the rest of their journey.

Nil dabbed attentively at Aloy’s forehead, careful to clean away the blood without re-opening the wound. They had taken up camp at the top of the hill encircled by the Tallneck, it’s looming form encompassing them with its steady gait. The accompanying machines, watchdogs as Aloy called them, seemed to be limited in numbers and no more appeared after he and Aloy shot down the few remaining of the pack guarding the Tallneck. She hypothesized that the watchdogs were built to keep people away from the looming machine; Nil had been skeptical at first, but it seemed to be the best explanation for why the machines had been so instantly aggressive. Whatever information the tallneck was broadcasting from the facility on the hill, it was important enough to guard, and Aloy was instantly interested.  
  
They had climbed the hill shortly after circling back to gather their abandoned packs from outside the meadow, Nil forcing Aloy to refrain from picking apart the machines until after her shoulder had healed. She had been less difficult than Nil had expected, which was a blessing and suspicious all at once. Aloy hadn’t brought up their conversation at the head of the Tallneck, and as far as Nil was concerned that was fine, but it was unlike her to not persist for details.  
  
Even now, her face had a contemplative look on it, avoiding his gaze as he carefully tended to her wounds. His hands hesitated above her lip, the wet cloth in his hand hovering over the crest of her wound. Her lower lip was slightly swollen, flushed with blood around a forming bruise where she had bitten into it earlier. The already full shape of her mouth seemed more provocative now, swollen and decorated with her blood, and Nil wasn’t sure he could bring himself to touch their perfection. Aloy raised her eyes questioningly, and they stayed locked there for a moment before she cleared her throat, breaking the silence.  
  
“I can get this, thanks,” she murmured, reaching for the cloth out of his hand. Their fingers brushed briefly, and Aloy recoiled as if he had shocked her. The sides of his fingers tingled with the momentary heat of her skin against his, and Nil swallowed with some effort. His stomach churned anxiously as he considered the implications of his earlier speech and her unusual behavior towards him as they settled in for the night. Had he unintentionally broken the comfortable companionship around them? The realm of emotion was unfamiliar to him, and so he decided to retreat away from her, busying his hands with the task of preparing a fire for them. The night was not particularly cold, but the fast winds from the coast not far west of them blew in heavy clouds as the evening drew on, and Nil noted with minimal interest the sound of rain pattering against the roof above them. They would need a fire to stay warm through the night, and also since this was his usual chore he hoped a familiar step into their comfortable routine might make Aloy open up.  
  
“Sounds nice,” Aloy said, her low voice drifting through the air to where Nil sat tending to the fire.  
  
He nodded absent mindedly, not all that interested in the weather, just happy to hear her voice. But Aloy continued, taking on a wistful tone. “It rains a lot in Nora lands, too. Something I missed while I was in the Sundom,” she explained, leaning back against one of the metal walls of the facility. “Only bad thing about it is that you can get pretty cold, especially when it rains for a couple days at a time.”  
  
Nil frowned, moving over to their packs to pull out a blanket for her. He didn’t want a repeat of the previous night along the coast, especially with Aloy’s shoulder muscles already so tense. “You should rest,” he said, holding out the blanket to her.   
  
Aloy shook her head but grabbed the fabric from him anyway. “Can’t. With how hard you got hit on the head, I don’t want to risk sleeping. I’ve got to stay up to make sure you don’t pass out, otherwise you might not wake up.”  
  
During the war, soldiers would experience similar symptoms, and Nil vaguely remembered similar advice being delivered to him and his comrades. His head still ached slightly from where the watchdog’s heavy jaws had collided with his upper body, so he nodded to Aloy in agreement. Nil hadn’t planned on sleeping anytime soon anyway as his body still buzzed with leftover energy from the battle earlier. The thought of sitting still bothered him, though, and he shifted uncomfortably in the minutes that passed, watching Aloy intently at first as she finished washing her face, then grabbed a fruit from her pack to eat. Nil stiffened immediately, focusing on keeping his face still. The idea of watching her, the sticky sweet juice from the fruit flowing down and over her hard jawline, the way she would lick her fingers clean afterwards…  
  
Nil rose to his feet, his skin crawling with pent up energy, the familiar wound in his chest throbbing hotly. Aloy looked up at him questioningly, and he avoided her gaze. “I’ll be back,” he responded simply, making his way towards the door to the outside.  
  
“Don’t go too far!” Aloy called back behind him, the last thing he heard as he dropped down to the wet grass below the opening to their bunker.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------

 

Aloy surveyed the room, some of her tension fading as Nil made his exit. She knew he wouldn’t leave her, but her anxiety still compelled her to remind him to stay close. He still seemed a little unsteady on his feet, and Aloy worried his recklessness might compel him to do something unsafe in his shaky condition. Still, she reminded herself that he had survived this far just fine, and she pushed down some of her feelings of protectiveness.  
  
Groaning, she pushed herself to her feet and began to move around the room, examining the strange consoles and metallic devices long rusted by the years since the old one’s presence. They appeared to be in an old military base of some sort, not unlike the one Aloy had explored to the north of the Nora lands. The Grave Hoard, or ‘U.S Robot Command’, as the old ones had called it. Little diagrams and miniaturized replicas of machines decorated the walls and shelves of the room, as well as various data log entries, which she scanned and began to read as she circled the chamber.   
  
The building was, in fact, an old military outpost designed to serve as a protection against attacks from the ocean near the end of operation enduring victory. The station was dubbed ‘McClellan’, and according to several datapoints it was used as a last-ditch outpost for Enduring Victory as several other bases were lost along the coast to the swarm. Aloy frowned as several datapoints recounted the gruesome tales of the soldiers last days attempting to hold out before the swarm overtook them; some were lighthearted, trying to bring some life into what must have been a difficult existence. Others brought Aloy immense sorrow, tales of families last communications before the inevitable destruction that faced them. The feeling was familiar and reminded her of being back at the heels of the Eclipse, Sylens’ voice following her constantly and chastising her for her emotions.  
  
Numbly, she wondered if he was still monitoring her now, silently judging her reactions and jealously collecting the information she scanned into her focus. Shaking her head, she tried not to think about it, and focused on reading several more datapoints before Nil reappeared, carrying a fat wet bird and a bundle of firewood. He was completely soaked, eyes shadowed underneath his dripping headdress. Aloy noticed that she could hear the rainfall quite clearly overhead now and realized that Nil must have hunted for food and firewood in the pouring rain outside. Additionally, the window of light filtering into the room had all but disappeared, signaling that the sun must have gone down. Guiltily, she hurried over to him to help carry his load to the fire, only to realize with a flash of shame that she was useless to help him with only one good working arm.  
  
As if sensing her frustration, he set down the bird and rested his free hand gently on her shoulder. “It’s alright,” he assured her, his voice cool in the soft firelight. Aloy stepped back, giving him room to set the firewood down, and busied herself instead with cleaning the bird and preparing it for roasting. Nil moved to the opposite side of the fire, removing his headdress and shaking droplets of rain from his soaked head. He ran a hand backwards over to smooth the strands of inky black hair, then added his vest to dry next to the fire, as well as his shoulder armor, belt, sandals…  
  
Aloy thrust her eyes down, focusing on the bird as her face burned, something foreign to her squirming in her belly. Her fingers felt hot and unsteady as she plucked the feathers from the bird’s corpse, and she cursed herself again for being so foolish. She knew that Carja felt less discomfort at the exposure of flesh, but having grown up with Nora customs she was still unfamiliar with the comfortable way that the people of the Sundom showed off their bodies. Nil seemed oblivious to her discomfort across from her, and Aloy realized she was holding her breath a moment too late to stop herself from releasing the tension in her chest with a loud sigh.  
  
Nil’s gaze burned into her and she forced herself to appear normal as she fidgeted clumsily with the carcass. “Is something wrong?” Came Nil’s voice, concern evident in his tone. She heard shifting and the change in Nil’s shadow across from her made Aloy’s hairs stand on end. “If your shoulder is bothering you, Aloy, let me handle that.”  
  
“No!” Aloy blurted, her head so hot she felt her ears might melt off. “No, uhh, its okay please just… finish what you’re doing. I can handle this Nil,” she managed, keeping her head low over the bird as she worked.  
  
The sound of Nil’s feet shifting was her only indication of his presence for several moments, until suddenly he made a move to come closer to her again, and she stiffened visibly. She opened her mouth to protest and felt the comfortable warmth of fabric across her shoulders. At her feet, she saw Nil’s knees crouched down in front of her, similarly cloaked in the scratchy cloth of their traveling blankets. His torso was appropriately covered and Aloy breathed an internal sigh of relief as he extended his hands, palm up in front of her and she finally lifted her gaze. His eyes were warm, and her defensiveness melted against the heat in her chest.  
  
“Let me finish,” he offered, and Aloy handed over the bird to him wordlessly. No sense in her continuing if he could do it faster, and it would save her the frustration of fumbling over it with one hand. Nil made quick work of it, removing the sticky internal organs and mounting the flesh above the heat of the fire. He mixed some of the fattier organs into a basin and began to boil a heavy broth, and Aloy felt thankful at the idea of a warm canteen of broth in the cold morning. Moving back over towards her, his eyes roved over her shoulders critically. “It looks mostly even. Does it still hurt?”  
  
Aloy made a movement to shrug and stopped herself. She remembered his tender hand on her shoulder earlier, easing her muscle out with the slow, rhythmic movement of his fingers. Her shoulder still ached now, but not enough to be a real bother. And yet… “Yeah, a little. I think the muscle is still tense,” she admitted, rubbing the shoulder with her opposite arm for extra emphasis.   
  
Nil nodded, moving behind her slowly. “May I?” he offered, resting his hands lightly over her shoulders.  
  
_‘Goddess please, yes!’_ Aloy squirmed, trying to still her heartbeat. “Sure, thank you,” she murmured, trying to seem casual. His thumbs pushed into the muscle around her shoulders and neck and she melted back into his grasp, soft pleasure coursing through her body. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had touched her, and Aloy was pleasantly surprised to discover that Nil’s contact did not fill her with revulsion or discomfort, as many other people did. His hands worked skillfully into her sore shoulder blades, working small circles around the base of her neck and rolling little lines down her spine.  
  
At one point, Nil lifted the top layer of her heavy armor over her shoulders to expose more of her back, his hands warm against her tense flesh. The thin fabric of her undershirt was barely a barrier between them, and Aloy cursed herself for not thinking of removing the disruptive armor sooner. He pressed his palm flat into the space between her shoulder blades, compressing the heat of his calloused hands into the soft space between muscles and Aloy released a breathy sigh, unable to contain the light pressure building in her chest.  
  
Abruptly, Nil removed his hands, jolting away from her. Aloy turned to him, confused and opened her mouth to form a question when she discerned the expression on his face. The muscles in his neck were drawn taunt and his lips were parted slightly, eyes locked onto her. He swallowed hard, but didn’t turn his gaze away from her, locking her into place. His expression was layered heavily with an emotion she did not recognize, but which somehow was not completely unfamiliar to her.  
  
Something unknown sparked viciously in her stomach, igniting a heat that began to pool in her belly. “I… What? What’s wrong?” She stammered, turning her head to search around the room for something she must be unaware of. Embarrassment twisted in the pit of her stomach and she wondered if she had done something wrong.  
  
“Aloy.” Nil’s voice was low, heady with emotion and her body responded accordingly, the muscles in her stomach tightening subconsciously and her tongue flicking out to moisten her lips. She turned back to face him and he cleared his throat, finally averting his gaze. “We should eat.”  
  
Aloy nodded weakly, transfixed as he moved around her to remove the bird from the fire and split the meat between them. She shivered, energy releasing from her body and he looked back up at her. “Are you cold?” He asked, looking over her exposed shoulder carefully.   
  
“Yeah, a little bit,” she replied, lying through her teeth. Nil nodded, moving his body next to hers while he ate, heat pooling between them within the thick fabric of their blankets. Aloy sighed, comfortable at this proximity where she could feel him close to her without the tension of his bare skin on hers. She realized with mild surprise that she had been craving this closeness with Nil, and the tension in her chest loosened some with the heat shared between their bodies. They sat in silence for some time, taking bites of the meat and intermittently moving to add wood to the fire. After some time Aloy shared what she had found about the bunker with Nil, recounting the datafiles while leaving out some of the less important details.   
  
She was always afraid of boring him, as he seemed to have a habit of losing interest in things he deemed unimportant. Yet Nil always seemed to listen to her attentively, nodding at the appropriate times and occasionally asking questions. He seemed particularly interested in the tales of the soldiers, his eyes sometimes getting a faraway look, as if lost in his own memories. She wanted to ask him about his time in the war, but she never knew how to formulate the question. She remembered the look of sorrow in Avad’s face as he had recounted the fight against his father, his face in that same faraway place that Nil seemed to go sometimes.  
  
“What were they fighting?” Nil asked at one point, gnawing on the remnants of a wing bone.  
  
Aloy flicked back through the datafiles, trying to find more detailed information. “Two kinds of machines seemed to attack them most often. The old ones used to keep big ships in the ocean but after the swarm it became too dangerous,” she explained, trying to condense the information in the datafile. Two machine classes repeated in the coded exchanges, _FAS-DSC4 Polypus_ and _FAS-DSS2 Manqi_. The two machines were originally designed to clean the ocean but were overtaken by the chariot line soon after the beginning of the war. She searched for a nickname for the machines that might hint at their appearance or purpose, but found nothing within the datafiles.  
  
“I’m not sure, but they seem to have been dangerous. They wiped out most of the bases near the ocean at the very beginning of the war,” Aloy explained, her face turned down in a taunt frown.  
  
Nil shrugged, stretching his arms over his head lazily. “Well, all the better reason to stay away from the water then. We can’t gain anything from it anyway,” he said, finishing his statement with a heavy yawn.  
  
She disagreed but yawned as well, her voice tired after so many hours of exertion. Her eyes closed for a moment and she felt Nil shift beside her, moving around the edge of the fire to fiddle with something. Her mind wavered in its consciousness, and she bent forward to rest her head against her palms and winced at the movement of her shoulder.  
  
“Uncomfortable?” Nil inquired, tilting his head to the side next to her. Their fire was a low pile of coals now, neither of them wanting to weather the rain outside to gather more wood. It was probably all wet by now anyway, Aloy had reasoned.   
  
She nodded at him and shifted to lay her back against the metal floor. Nil reached out his hand, curling it firmly around her arm. “Hold on,” he said, shifting around behind her so his back was flush against the wall adjacent to their fire pit. His blanket rested around his shoulders now, dry silken pants covering his legs loosely below his bare chest, and he gestured to her to come closer. Aloy squinted at him, shuffling close enough for him to reach out and grab onto her and twisted her body so that her back rested against his chest. Aloy squirmed for a moment before relaxing, realizing with a huff of breath that she felt comfortable and warm in his grasp, and that was enough.  
  
Nil folded the blanket over the top of her, shielding her from the cold air and trapping their combined body heat within. Her face was flushed again, but the knowledge of it phased her less. Waking up next to Nil that morning hadn’t been so bad, and she had to admit that sharing their body heat made sense. Humming thoughtfully, she released the tension in the back of her neck so that her head fell slack against Nil, slotting between his shoulder and neck.  
  
“Hey Nil, can I ask you something?” She murmured sleepily, and he hummed in response, nodding his head slightly. “When you first woke up at the ranch, what were you talking about? The blood and all that, is that a Carja metaphor for the sunrise?”  
  
He stirred slightly behind her, clearing his throat before continuing. “It was your hair.”  
  
Aloy’s brow furrowed, and she twisted her head to try and look at him. “What?”  
  
“Your hair. I’ve never seen anyone with hair as red as yours. It reminded me of blood,” he explained, his eyes closed and his face relaxed.  
  
Aloy twisted her face, scrunching up her nose. “That’s a little morbid,” she chastised, but her voice held no heat. It was a little bit of a compliment she supposed, coming from Nil.  
  
Nil’s chest shook under her, and she huffed uncomfortably as she re-adjusted her shoulder. “My initial categorization may have been a bit hasty,” he admitted, tilting his face so that his breath billowed out hot over her scalp. “It’s more like fire. A blazing whip of heat off the sun.”  
  
Her breath came out in a soft laugh, and she could swear she felt his mouth twist into a smile above her. He pressed his face down further against her head, and Aloy could barely hear him release a soft hum under his breath. Nil’s body was warm against hers, but the space where his head touched her felt hot, almost scorching, and she felt his nose and chin press into her hair, releasing a soft gust of warm air over her scalp. She shifted, turning her face to look at him and ask him further questions but the motion died on her tongue. He had kept his face still over her head, immobilized like a man of stone next to her, and as she twisted her face to look at him her nose brushed precariously over his chin.  
  
Aloy let out a short, choked noise at the closeness and Nil’s breath came in a sharp inhale, his steely eyes locked fervently onto hers. She was paralyzed, the fire in her chest roaring back to life and rooting her in place. Her hands itched to reach up and touch Nil’s face, to trace the fine edge of the scars decorating his cheeks and explore the sharp panel of his jaw. At this close distance she could discern the full depths of his steely gray eyes, flecked with silver and contrasted against the heavy black of his pupils.  “Aloy,” he whispered, the fine hair on his unshaven chin brushing against hers. She shuddered, her flesh tingling where he fell flush in contact with her. “You wound me, Aloy. The heat of your fire burns into my flesh. I burn alive like a man who dared grasp the sun.”  
  
His hand brushed across her waist, the other moving cautiously to trace the outline of her jaw. She held her breath uncertainly. He was so, so gentle. When was the last time anyone treated her like something that needed to be held with care? His hand finished its motion and his thumb pressed into the tip of her chin, his calloused thumb brushing up against her lip and sending a shockwave of heat along her body.  
  
“I feel it,” she managed, her voice breathy and uncertain. The fire in her chest smoldered in his presence, and she cursed herself for being unable to weave her words into the delicate patterns like the ones that Nil had constructed to capture her.  
  
He seemed unperturbed by her simplicity, angling his forehead to press against hers. His eyes closed and he breathed deeply, his exhale a breathy sigh. Aloy felt more comfortable and safe than she had since the days before the proving, curled up in the warm blankets of her bed in Rost’s cabin, the fire crackling in the corner. She closed her eyes as well, drinking up the peacefulness of the moment and stealing it away in her heart for when she may need it later.  Nil’s grip tightened slightly against her waist and the hand at her jaw cupped under her chin, firm but still gentle; almost uncertain in its movements. She was putty in his hands, moldable in this warm, simple moment.  
  
Instinctively, she pushed into his grip and he completed his motion, pushing his lips into hers softly at first then with more force, a low noise escaping his throat. Aloy keened, her body foreign to her but her brain in such an exhilarated rush she felt no desire to retreat. Her hand reached up, grasping onto the back of his neck and she pushed back against him, letting her instincts guide her. She was rewarded as Nil redoubled his efforts, moving his other hand down to her waist with a growl and repositioning her more comfortably against him, his mouth never leaving hers. Aloy’s mind swam, her entire body coursing with that desirable heat.   
  
_Desire._  
  
She put a name to the feeling and her chest constricted, her emotions finally catching up with her in the moment. She leaned back so that her lips barely grazed Nil’s and he let her catch her breath, peppering her cheekbones with small, gentle brushes of his lips. He hummed happily against her, and she clutched to him tighter, the vibration of his chest carrying into her own. He brushed his face against the top of her head and released her momentarily to draw the blankets more comfortably around them. Not a word passed between them, the silence broken only by the calm pattering of the rain on the roof and the occasional crackle of the dying fire.   
  
Nil breathed out a heavy sigh, his voice muffled against her hair. “Aloy…” he whispered, barely audible, and rubbed his head affectionately against hers. “Your fire lives in me.”  
  
Aloy snorted, amused at Nil’s inability to speak plainly and the feeling of his facial hair against her forehead. Her entire body felt relaxed, and they laid there for some time longer before Nil’s breathing stabilized against her, drifting into deep motions of sleep. She smiled, her face pressed into his chest, and her last thought was clouded with her amused languidness, reflecting on the idea that Nil didn’t really need to speak plainly this time for her to understand exactly what he meant. Beside them, the fire’s last coals died out, but they never felt the cold.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my goooooodddd y'all! They're smooching!! *A*
> 
> Anyway, hope everyone is having a fantastic summer! Happy late solstice and all that! Now we're officially counting down the days to my favorite season, Fall!
> 
> I'm having lots of fun designing forbidden west machines, and I hope everyone is excited to meet some of my creations within the next couple chapters. Hopefully Nil and Aloy can handle what I'm going to throw at them :3c Hope nothing bad happens.
> 
> Again, thank you so much for your comments/kudos! You all are so sweet and I'm always so excited to get notifications that people have commented. Remember you can always shoot me a message on my tumblr, problematic-cinnamon-roll ! See you next Friday!
> 
> PS... rating for this fic will go up next chapter... *wink-wonk*


	8. Of Reverence and Transformation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nil does his best to convince Aloy to rest her shoulder. His methods may be unorthodox, but are exceptionally effective.  
> *SMUT*

Aloy shifted blearily, a feeling she was unaccustomed to upon waking. Time spent traveling on her own had taught her that quick reflexes and forceful awareness upon waking made for safer mornings, but since traveling with Nil this instinct had dulled somewhat. She slept more heavily and woke less easily. It reminded her of her youth, staggered mornings where she reluctantly pulled on heavy fur boots and trudged into deep snow behind Rost, shivering in the biting frost of the Nora winter.   
  
The situation now could not be more different; the warm rays of the sun peeking in between the dripping window of the old outpost and Nil’s warm sleeping form shifting slightly with his slow breathing. Aloy felt… comfortable. She resisted the urge to shift and move into the motions which would start their day, and instead mimicked the easy breathing of sleep, hoping to delay the arduous task of removing herself from Nil’s pleasant warmth. He usually awoke before her, so it surprised her slightly to feel his even breathing behind her.  
  
She comforted herself with the possibility that he too was feigning the motions of sleep so that they could steal a few more precious moments of intimacy. Aloy played with this idea in her head, examining how it made her feel. Good, seemed to be the resounding conclusion. She tried and failed to think of any other human she had encountered that made her feel this way; exposed, but in a way that made her feel secure and warm instead of that familiar itchy feeling of defensiveness. She supposed Rost had made her feel safe like this, but something about it was… different. It felt off comparing the two relationships when really there were not many things similar about how they made her feel.  
  
Swallowing hard, Aloy fully confronted the idea that what she was experiencing was, in fact, true romantic attachment. She supposed this should be obvious after their brief entanglement the previous night, but the actual acceptance of such a revelation was difficult for her. Especially given the fact that Nil was, in the most simplified terms, a murderous Carja with an infatuation with some abstract concept of who she was. Was that any different from how other people viewed her…? Yes and No. But… more yes than no?  
  
_‘You bring life to me’_ , he had said. It was so straightforward, and yet it also wasn’t at all.  
  
Aloy sighed unintentionally and Nil shifted behind her, tightening his encircled arms around her shoulders. Her heart fluttered in her chest and she found herself pushing naturally back into his grip, submitting her cheek to a sleepy brush of his lips. He stayed silent in the stillness of the morning, and Aloy was grateful. So many things had happened so quickly over the past few days, she wasn’t sure she could just get up and start the day, like nothing had changed.  
  
Had something changed?  
  
She wasn’t completely sure. Aloy felt like herself; nothing had changed internally. Nil was similarly quiet like stone behind her, calm and silent as he rested his cheek into her hair, breath flicking strands forward into the corner of her eyesight. Maybe things hadn’t been happening so quickly as it seemed. Maybe this had been happening for a long time and she just hadn’t noticed it.  
  
Nil’s stomach grumbled audibly behind her and Aloy confronted the need to get started with the day. “Hungry?”  
  
Nil nodded behind her and when she made a move to get up he placed his hand firmly on her uninjured shoulder, keeping her grounded in the warmth of the blankets as he rose instead to gather breakfast. He stretched in front of the bones of their fire, lean muscles in his exposed lower back pulling taunt and leading into the hard expanse of muscle that was his shoulder. Aloy watched from the safe warmth of the blanket, fascinated. Nil pulled the two flasks of broth from his pack and Aloy followed the way the flesh moved across his arms as he flicked the sparking flint, encouraging their fire back to life. He was very deliberate in his movements, methodical even. His face was flat, although there was a peaceful sleepy quality to it that Aloy could read within the absence of tense lines between his eyebrows and along his mouth. In fact, the indents at the edges of his lips curled upwards ever so slightly in the ghost of a smile. His eyes flicked up to hers and she cleared her throat in embarrassment at being caught examining him.  
  
“We should take today to gather supplies and recoup before pushing forward into the tribal territory,” Aloy said, flicking her focus on and re-examining the map. If her estimations were correct, the trip up the coastline to the area which the map indicated as the next large settlement would be several days if they pushed hard, and several weeks if they traveled easy. Somehow, she felt Nil would want to take the easy option with her shoulder as it was.  
  
Tapping the map out of her eyesight, Aloy turned her attention back to Nil, who was eyeing her with mild surprise. “You want to take a day to rest?” He questioned, disbelief plain in his face.  
  
“Well… no, not exactly. We have supplies to gather and plans to make, so we won’t be wasting any time,” Aloy corrected.  
  
Nil shook his head at her. “Ensuring you are well for travel is not wasting time,” he said, continuing to encourage the growing flames of the fire.   
  
Aloy scrunched up her nose, indignantly. “My shoulder only needs to rest for several days. In that time we can easily be gathering materials and riding. We just need to be careful to stay out of trouble,” she insisted, uncomfortable at the idea that Nil wanted her to stay still and wait for her to heal before they moved on.  
  
They maintained tense eye contact for a moment before Nil moved closer to her again, leaving the two flasks of broth to heat by the fire. He pushed the front of the blanket aside and reached forward to Aloy’s shirt, pushing the fabric aside and over her shoulder before she instinctively arched backwards away from him.  
  
“What are you doing?” She demanded, her face flushed with embarrassment.  
  
Nil eyed her cooly and tilted his head, as if confused where her reaction was coming from. “I want to check your shoulder, see where the bruises are forming and make sure the swelling isn’t too bad,” he explained simply, and reached forward to her again.  
  
Aloy swallowed hard, her pulse beating hard in her neck as Nil’s hands reached forward and pulled the edges of her shirt low across her arm. His eyes rolled over her flesh critically, and she fought the urge to swat his hands away.  
  
“I need a better look at your back. Turn around and lift your arm up,” he said, gesturing to her uninjured side loosely, his face tight with concentration. He didn’t seem very happy about the sickly yellow colouring along the front of her chest, a reminder of the sharp bolt from the watchdog which had struck her the previous day. She obeyed, relieved at being able to at least hide her flushed face from him _. ‘Get ahold of yourself Aloy, he’s just trying to help!’_  
  
Her resolve was short lived, as Nil’s fingers deftly slipped under the hemline of her shirt and pulled the fabric over her head in one fluid motion. Aloy made a choked gasping noise, and her arms flew forward instinctively in an attempt to cover herself. “Ah- Ow! Fuck!” She snapped, her shoulder flaring as her arm moved forward, and she dropped it back immediately, exposed but more comfortable.  
  
“Stop moving it,” came Nil’s chiding voice behind her. “The cold is only temporary.”  
  
Aloy fought back the urge to snap back or laugh at him. Did he really think she was reacting over the chill at the loss of her shirt? She grew up on Nora lands, for Goddess’ sake, this misty landscape was nothing compared to the bitter cold she endured. “I’m not cold,” she said, trying to keep her voice even.  
  
Nil didn’t respond, and moments later Aloy felt his careful hands easing their way up her back. His palm made a long, smooth motion from her lower back up through her shoulder, presumably checking her level of swelling around the irritated muscles of her shoulders. She felt goosebumps sweep up around her flesh where his hand left a warm trail, and she focused on the feeling. His fingertips were calloused, yet the way he caressed her flesh had an undeniable smooth quality, akin to the way one might run their fingertips curiously over a slip of fine silk.  
  
“That… feels nice,” Aloy murmured, unsure of how to react under his careful ministrations.   
  
He hummed behind her and shifted forward to press a soft kiss into the space between her shoulder blades. “So do you,” he replied, continuing to trail a line of soft kisses up and around her neck, stopping to place his head softly against hers.  
  
Aloy’s heart began hammering in her chest again and her fingernails dug roughly into her side, her arm constricting against her bare chest. Nil seemed to notice this and moved his body around to face her, eyes searching her expression. His eyes roved excruciatingly slowly over her tense posture, her hand clenched furtively at her side, and the swell of her breasts over the edge of her forearm. His tongue swiped out slowly and wet his lips before he looked at her again, eyes heavy with suggestion, but also an odd glint of confusion.   
  
“You have nothing to be ashamed of, Aloy. Your body is a toned weapon of beauty and destruction,” he purred, his silver eyes locked onto her like a stalker ready to pounce. “Aren’t the Nora proud of their strength?”  
  
Aloy shivered, her stomach muscles tightening at his low intonation; her whole body felt like a taut wire ready to snap. “I don’t know if the Nora have ever been proud of anything but tradition,” she replied tersely, trying to hide her uncertainty in the moment.  
  
Nil hummed again, nodding as if remembering her estrangement with her birth tribe. The way he continued, however, made it seem as though this idea didn’t really matter one way or another. “The Carja are taught to be proud of their bodies, especially those chosen to be the forged weapons of the sun king’s extended knife arm,” he explained, expression briefly shadowing as if in memory before he continued. “You are like a sharp, deadly arrowhead. Striking with such precision as only made for kings.”  
  
Aloy scowled a moment, her mind flashing briefly to Avad and his proclaimed affection for her. Such things seemed so far away now, but in the moment, the exchange with him upon his balcony seemed re-contextualized. “I was made for no king,” she responded tersely, perhaps with more bite than she might have intended.   
  
Nil’s face broke into a wide, feral smile. “No,” he confirmed, and moved closer to her, his right arm slinking up the smooth flesh along the side of her abdomen. “You are something coveted, Aloy, but never owned. A wildness that cannot be tamed. I know this. We are like two sides of the same knife blade.”  
  
Her breath stuttered in her chest a moment as he moved in slowly to her, predatory-like, and his lips found the side of her neck, nipping softly at first then pressing a hard kiss to her pulse point. She was sure he could feel the pounding of her blood there, and something sinister coiled up from within her stomach, rooting her to where she sat rather than encouraging her to move out of his grasp. Her lips opened slightly in a hot release of breath, but her arm remained firmly across the front of her body, guarding her uncertainty.  
  
She could feel his hot breath against her ear, and his voice was so low, so close, it sent a shiver up her spine. “You have no need to be afraid, Aloy.”  
  
“I’m not afraid,” she insisted indignantly.  
  
But she was.  
  
Afraid of opening up, both metaphorically and physically. Afraid of being viewed honestly and being disliked. Since when had anyone ever wanted to see her plainly? Without the gauze of any titles or achievements or allegiances? Nil’s fingers splayed out against her skin, feeling at the fringes of her constructed shell and coaxing her to expose herself. In a moment of stark clarity she realized that it was terrifying to be known, and perhaps she had been lucky thus far that everyone she had met had wanted to twist their vision of her to suit whatever made them most comfortable. It was easier. Simpler. She was Aloy of the Nora. Aloy, the savior of Meridian.  
  
But she wasn’t.  
  
And Nil seemed to know this, pushed past the perceived nonsense of social graces and forced himself immediately to the truth of the matter. Perhaps that was what was so initially frightening about him. Maybe it was also what Aloy liked best about him. Why she had been so happy, in that secret place of her heart, to see his visage that day in the dusty expanse of lonely desert. Maybe she wanted to be seen. Maybe he could see her, and then show her what he had found. Maybe he would like it.  
  
That foreign feeling in her stomach uncoiled and Aloy arched instinctively, entangling her fingers into Nil’s hair and pulled his mouth off her neck, locking it onto hers instead. He released a low noise, something between a growl and a moan, and his grip on her waist tightened fiercely. Their exposed chests pressed into one another, and the intense expanse of skin on skin contact sent a shock of pleasure down to Aloy’s most intimate of places. She clutched desperately to him, trying to pull herself closer, wishing with intense desire that her shoulder was more motile so that she could hold him more tightly.   
  
Nil wasted no time, his hands exploring roughly into the soft flesh above her hip bones, then moving across the toned expanse of her stomach, thumbing the points of her ribcage where they created sharp hills along the front of her body. He ran one of his thumbs against the underside of her breast and a moan slipped from between her lips, barely audible from beneath the hot entanglement of their mouths. Nil growled, biting her lower lip and she shuddered, her nails dragging a ragged line down his abdomen.   
  
Seemingly unable to resist the compulsion and driven by Aloy’s uncontained enthusiasm, Nil brought the palm of his hand upwards, grasping the globe of her breast within his hand. Aloy stiffened, the sensation surprising her and Nil pushed forward into her, urging her slowly down onto her back below him. His gaze was intense on her, and Aloy felt trapped underneath the power of emotion between them for a moment before being called back to attention by the light movement of his hand against her plush flesh. His hand massaged experimentally into the round of her breast and Aloy’s eyes fluttered closed, her entire focus devoted to the growing sensation of pleasure tightening throughout her body.  
  
Aloy involuntarily let out a soft cry as Nil’s deft fingers squeezed the peak of her nipple, giving it a delicious twist before trailing a line of wet kisses down from her neck to her breast. He swirled the tip of his tongue experimentally around the sensitive flesh and Aloy keened, her hand gripping onto him tightly. He released a low growl, urged on by her firm hands and her desperate noises, soft against the backdrop of the hard stone. Nil took her breast fully into his mouth, sucking harder in an effort to produce more of those intoxicating reactions, wondering at the softness of her voice when she was so often loud and confident.  
  
Her back arched off the ground and she keened, louder this time, but dropped abruptly as the shaky muscles connected to her shoulder refused to hold her. Nil returned his mouth to hers, his hands continuing to tease at her breasts as he swallowed another of her moans between his lips. “Stay still,” Nil breathed, his voice hot against her ear. Aloy nodded enthusiastically, and nestled further into the blanket below her, her eyes open now and her gaze expectant.

A sharp feeling of fondness snapped into Nil’s awareness as he looked at her beneath him. Her face was flushed and her lips were parted slightly, swollen from kisses and the bite of her teeth. Her previous nervousness seemed to have eased dramatically, and there was a glint of something akin to excitement in her face, similar to that fascination she held when learning about something new from her focus. Discovery, perhaps? Arousal flashed hard in the pit of Nil’s stomach, and he realized this was new and fresh to him as well.   
  
“What are you thinking about?” Aloy’s voice was husky, low and shadowed by the heavy weight of her amativeness. A smile played at the edges of her lips, and her free hand had released its tight grip on his wrist in favor of running fingers across the exposed flesh of his chest.  
  
“Us,” Nil replied. “This. It’s very…” His voice trailed off, and Aloy smiled. “Yeah, I know,” she said, curling her hand around his neck and pulling him back closer to her, their lips meeting again softly. “Let’s keep going.”  
  
Nil needed no further encouragement, his hand firmly squeezing her breast again before moving down slowly, tracing the line of muscle down Aloy’s stomach and dipping into the recess of soft flesh created by the angle of her hip bone. His fingers slipped into the knotted tip of her leggings, releasing the ties and moving lower. Aloy’s breath hitched in her throat and her body tensed with anticipation at Nil’s slow, smooth journey towards the apex of her building pleasure.  
  
He curled his fingertips curiously for a moment at the fine bed of hair which guarded the edge of her hot core, then dipped his thumb down to tease over her clit. She sucked in a heady breath, caught off guard by the answering shock of pleasure from the touch. Nil’s cock twitched precariously and he took in a deep breath, focusing on controlling the fiery licks of lust that clawed around his concentration. She was so appetizing, Nil could barely keep himself from sinking his teeth into her, and the thought alone of her blood on his tongue made him growl against her neck.  
  
Aloy shifted, pushing her hips up into him and his attention snapped back to his hand, and the hot wetness that laid just below it. He shifted the angle, maneuvering so that his fingers pressed against the sticky center of her sex while his thumb continued to press tauntingly against her bud. She whimpered and he swirled around the tip of her clit, causing her volume to increase dramatically. The wetness at the edge of his index finger was beginning to drive him mad, and he pushed forwards with it experimentally, finding the flesh welcoming and soft, drawing him in.  
  
Her hips bucked upwards again and Nil’s finger slid smoothly into her. Aloy moaned, her breath coming out in hot gasps. “More,” she whimpered. “Ah, fuck, its…”  
  
Nil thrust his hand deeper and she cried out, her voice broken as he moved his finger within her, curling the digit up and in and out of her slick folds. He kissed at her neck, then moved down lower to suckle at her breast, enjoying the salty sweetness of the sweat that had begun to collect in an appetizing sheen along her flesh. She panted his name in between her moans and Nil redoubled his effort, adding a second finger and focusing on the ways he could tease his digits against her pussy that would make her release more of those filthy noises.  
  
Aloy’s whole body began to tense and her whimpers became more frequent, her voice coming out in a choked plea. “Ah, Nil, I can’t.. don’t stop- please, its..!”

Nil was merciless, driving his fingers hard against the bundle of nerves within her heat and pushing his thumb in hard swirls over her clit. Aloy threw her head backwards, crying out and her cunt tightened around Nil’s fingers, her spasms of pleasure seeming to rock through her entire body. His head jerked upwards from her breast, kissing and nipping into her neck and pressing into her as her breathing slowed, and her entire body relaxed. He withdrew his fingers from her with some reluctance and pulled her head back down to his, capturing her lips again. She moved softly against him, slow with the heaviness of her release.  
  
Nil just wanted to hold her, and the weight of this realization was staggering to him, somehow. His own lust was an ache throughout his entire body, and the tension of it made him feel both possessive and protective of her, fluid and calm as she was below him. He circled his arms around her, pulling her close and peppering kisses along her face, cheeks, forehead and hair. She released a slow, breathy sigh, and the action was so full of contentment and peace that it touched Nil, calming away the frayed edges of his ministrations. He pulled the blanket around them again and ignored the fire, or what was left of it. Aloy’s breathing was slow and languid against his chest, and he decided that it was a perfectly fine morning for extra sleep. She needed to rest, anyway.  
  
Aloy curled up closer to him, her fingers gripping softly against his flesh. She murmured something low that he couldn’t quite hear and the ache in his chest throbbed painfully in response. Nil curled his fingers up into her hair and wrapped himself behind her, cocooning his body against her peaceful warmth, and found himself pacified by the easy rise and fall of her chest. He amused himself before sleep with the thought that somehow he had begun to delight in the idea of life, rather than death. Nil focused on matching his breathing with her own, and only felt satisfied for sleep once their hearts beat entwine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hhhholy shit, sorry this chapter is late guys! I've been sick with the flue the past week and also just started working a pretty strenuous internship. Also, I wanted to make sure this chapter was right so I spent way too long writing and editing it. I've never done smut before soooo please let me know what you thought??
> 
> Thanks again for reading, I can't wait to hear what you all think 8w8

**Author's Note:**

> First time fic poster! Please let me know if you find any errors so I can edit them out. Chapters will be posted in a semi-regular fashion which I haven't totally decided on yet. I plan on this being a longfic, so buckle your seatbelts.
> 
> Big thanks to my BF who has generously beta'd for me, and to my inspiration queenofkadara, who has written the best HZD fics, and just some of the best fics in general.
> 
> If you want to message me, you can check out my blog, problematic-cinnamon-roll.tumblr.com


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